Millions of people draw on care and support and have legal requirements to do so, but the annual squeeze on care provider fees continues to put essential services at risk.
As we look to the forthcoming Local Government Finance Settlement for England there are pressing matters for providers to influence and fee uplifts for 2024-25 to negotiate.
We know councils are in difficult situations and that funding from central Government is not enough. But the combination of squeezed funding, increasing demand and mounting inflationary costs are already having far-reaching impacts on providers. We continue to see the gap widen between the true costs of providing care and the lag in fee rates.
This autumn saw VODG bring in the expertise of crisis negotiators and trained actors who used role-played scenarios to explore influencing strategies with our membership, to help them be best placed to address current challenges.
Alongside conversations with commissioners, an important tactic is to also engage political leaders responsible for social care portfolios across local authorities. These leaders have a central responsibility for the care provider ‘market’. VODG intelligence across our membership finds that many of our members would not be able to continue local authority funded services if commissioners did not match fee rates with rises in the latest uplift to the national living wage.
Fundamentally care providers must be engaged early to enable the right strategic conversations to be had between the council and providers – enabling risks, issues and opportunities to be addressed. All too often a pattern repeats which sees little meaningful engagement with providers and rates simply published without sufficient understanding of the impact this will have on outcomes for people using commissioned services. In the worst situations, which are becoming increasingly common, rates are set at a level which compromises the viability of services and can lead to the hand back of contracts.
We have therefore written to all council adult and children portfolio holders across England calling on them to directly engage with third sector providers delivering support for and alongside disabled people.
VODG is calling on cabinet leaders to:
- Convene a meeting with third sector leaders to hear first-hand about delivery issues and ideas for co-produced solutions to the council’s challenges.
- Ahead of setting rates for 2024/25, gain assurance that effective engagement with the third sector has taken place, including the identification and escalation of issues that could compromise commissioned services.
- Co-produce with providers a local costing model that ensures the rates for 2024/25 and beyond will enable the council to commission the workforce well above minimum wage rates to effectively mitigate workforce competition from other sectors.
- Develop a model for the co-design of services with people who draw on social care, the third sector and commissioners.
- Encourage transformative approaches to commissioning that maximise relationship-based partnerships and draw on the vision for how integrated care systems should work.
Councils and third sector providers share a common purpose to maximise public benefit, and these actions offer a platform for meaningful and sustainable partnership. Partnership building with the third sector need not necessarily require additional resources, but offers huge potential to maximise the benefit of the resource available.
Our experience is that when taken together these efforts can help make a difference to local communities, the wider economy and support progressive approaches that enable people who draw on social care to lead their best lives possible.