Issue - meetings

Report of the Executive Director of People

The Cabinet considered a report of the Executive Director of People, which sought approval of commissioning proposals for the provision of effective home support services.

Prior to considering the proposals, the Cabinet Members present confirmed that they had received and read the Equality and Consultation Analysis (ECA) which had been circulated separately to the main report.

Home support was personal care and support delivered to people who meet the eligibility criteria for social care and who were living in their own homes, to enable them to remain living independently for as long as possible.  As well as supporting adults and older people, the support provided assists carers and relatives in maintaining their caring role, and children.

Existing adults and children’s home support services were provided under a framework contract awarded in 2010 with a small number of contracts awarded subsequently to ensure sufficient provision was in place.  Under these arrangements a range of independent providers were contracted to provide services with no guarantee of volume of work.  Since these contracts were let, there had been a number of significant changes in social care and the market in general, including the introduction of the Care Act 2014, Children and Families Act 2014, changing regulatory framework and changes to employment terms and conditions through the introduction of the National Minimum Wage.

Providers of home support had reported that due to cost pressures, a larger volume of business was required in order to ensure that services were sustainable.  It was therefore proposed that children’s and adults home support be brought together under one commissioning activity to ensure children’s home support supply is not restricted due to having low volume children’s only providers which would not be maintainable.

It was proposed to undertake a procurement exercise to award nine contracts for home support ranging between 1,200 and 1,500 hours per week per contract.  The contracts would be of seven years duration (five years plus the option to extend by a further two years) to enable security for providers in order for them to invest appropriately in the development and training of their workforce.  Seven contracts would focus on support to older people, younger adults with physical impairment and children and would be aligned to Coventry’s seven GP cluster areas.  The remaining two contracts would provide support on a city wide basis to people with learning disabilities and/or mental ill health.  It was intended that for each contract there would be a primary and secondary provider to provide resilience.

The Cabinet noted that the procurement process would be undertaken at a time where there was increasing emphasis on bringing together health and social care to operate as a more cohesive single system, while recognising the different statutory duties that existed.  In order to recognise this, the procurement process would include requirements for Continuing HealthCare (CHC) which was currently provided by similar providers but under a different contract.  It was estimated that the CHC requirement totalled 4,500 hours citywide.  The CHC element of the contract would  ...  view the full minutes text for item 50