Success for the little guy: care and support contracts and unfair pricing aborted

Sense has prevailed at last!

In my last post, I discussed why the tendering of care and support services was such a bad idea, after Edinburgh Council was forced to abandon its tender process.  The independent review stated that the process was not implemented meticulously or thoroughly enough, that there remained concerns about the ranking of the bidding service providers, and that it opened up the Council to legal challenges from unsuccessful bidders.

Given all of this, it was astonishing that, at last week’s Finance and Resources Committee, the LibDem/SNP administration decided that it was perfectly OK to set the rate of Direct Payments based on the outcome of the flawed tender – at a value of £15.04.  Direct Payments (DPs) are sums of money given to people requiring care and support in lieu of that care and support.  They are popular amongst some service users who want to be given more freedom and choice over who provides their care.  DPs also offer service users a degree of financial independence and autonomy.

The administration insisted, last week, that this level was over and above what was necessary, and that service users should just be happy with it.  Officers and administration councillors defended this rate to the hilt, saying it was reasonable enough, especially given the ‘consultation’ with service users and advocates that had happened prior to Christmas.  Lesley Hinds and I argued that it was completely inappropriate to base the DP level of the abandoned tender process, and that we desperately needed a more concerted effort to consult and communicate with service users AND providers to reach an appropriate DP level that would allow adequate funds to deal with what are often very complex individual care needs, as well as to reestablish the trust in the Council that had been so comprehensively lost over the past few months.  We we mocked and pilloried, and ultimately brushed aside.

However, again using that most valuable of Standing Orders (the one which resulted in this issue going to Full Council in the first place back in October), we managed to get the decision of the DP level referred to Full Council.

Much to my astonishment (and that of Lesley and the service users, I think), the Administration tabled an amendment to their decision of the previous week throwing out the DP level of £15.04, and stating that more dialogue was necessary.  The second U-turn in as many months!

This U-turn signifies several things:

Firstly, it exemplifies the power of the people!  Without the campaigning effort, the sweat and tears that service users and their advocates have put in over the last 4 months, this outcome would never have been achieved.  The work of organisations, individuals, and family members deserves all the credit – you all did fantastic work, and inspired so many other people to action.  Well done, and thank you!

Secondly, this outcome highlights a deep, structural flaw within the relationship between the LibDem/SNP administration and the Council officers.  There is an arrogance within the Administration that not only prevents them from listening to people, but also seems to absolve them of all responsibility.  Over the course of the tendering process, I constantly reminded them that tendering was problematic, that the consequences needed to be adequately thought through, and that the overall strategy of care provision required clearer thinking and planning.  The procurement bandwagon was all too easily jumped on; afterall, if we employ procurement specialists, of course tendering opportunities are going to be designed, whether appropriate or not.  The Administration failed to heed the warnings many of us gave them during the process, and constantly reaffirmed the process, despite the absence of a wider strategy.  Then, when it went wrong, it was all the officers’ fault.  Talk about lack of judgement and leadership!

Thirdly, and perhaps most controversially, this U-turn indicates the lack of ability within the current Administration to lead a city like Edinburgh.  They are closed to constructive criticism, absolutely determined that they have all the answers, and completely unable to take the blame when they mess up.  I do not pretend to have all the answers, but I would like to think that I am able of listening to others who might have some of the answers I don’t.

However, yesterday was a good day for the people of Edinburgh requiring Care and Support services.  I hope to be a part of the dialogue over the coming weeks to help rebuild the trust between them and the Council, and ensure we come to an agreement about the best way forward for dealing with their care requirements.

Care & Support Tender abandoned … for now …

The Finance and Resources committee today agreed not to proceed with the awarding of Care and Support contracts as originally proposed.

On the face of it, this is good news.  It means that people currently receiving care and support services should not experience a change in provider, and they should not have to move to Direct Payments (more on this later), unless they want to.  So far, so good.  However, the competitive tendering of these services is not going to go away.  We will get, some time in the summer, a Commissioning Strategy for the Council will be brought forward.  I have no doubt that further tendering processes will be carried out on the back of this strategy.

I am instinctively against the automatic competitive tendering of services, and have argued this position consistently over the last nearly three years as a councillor.  Putting services out to tender, rather than coming to agreement with service providers via Service Level Agreements drawn up on the basis of specific requirements and localised principles, raises several issues:

Firstly, it assumes that the market is the best place for deciding the cost of service provision.  Despite protestations to the contrary, quality factors necessarily take a back seat in such a process; if Best Value is the bottom line, then lower prices are what will score more points, regardless of the quality of the service that can be bought for that price.  Quality issues are considered, but the line between quality and cost is very difficult to maintain, and the details are often obscured.

Secondly, tendering often results in the smaller organisations (often local, community-based voluntary organisations) losing out to larger companies that can afford to bid lower because they have a larger financial cushion.  The effects of this on employees and communities cannot be overestimated.  Small organisations have the potential to respond to individual needs more appropriately, especially when their employees live and work in the same communities as the service users.  Relationships between service users and their carers have to be built on trust, respect and compassion; characteristics that are all too often lost in larger organisations with little direct connection to the communities they serve.  Small organisations might also feel pressured into restructuring and merging with others to reduce overhead costs.  Whilst this can be hugely beneficial for all involved, and can result in robust, sustainable organisations, assuming that it will be automatically, without any proper support or consultation, is both naive and patronising.

Thirdly, if some service providers lose out to larger ones, and their viability as organisations is jeopardised, their staff are not guaranteed employment in the new service provider organisations.  The lack of income security experienced in tender processes is not good for anyone.  Even if the new service providers can employ staff from the unsuccessful bidders, there is little or no guarantee that their pay and conditions will be as good as they were prior to the tendering process.  Yes, there are regulations governing the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) – or TUPE – but there are loopholes and caveats in such arrangements that can mean staff face pay or condition reductions within weeks of their transfer.  I firmly believe that it is the Council’s duty to ensure that the workers in our city are treated fairly – and we have seen too many examples where TUPE just hasn’t worked.

These are just some of the reasons why competitive tendering is problematic.  Granted, there may be justifiable reasons for going down this path, but only once the impacts on individuals and communities have been fully thought through.

Whenever any service redesign is considered, consultation and communication with all the different parties involved is crucial; and this should not just be a discussion of decisions to be taken.  Rather than presenting a couple of options to people, if we want to be truly consultative, then we should include them right from the beginning in the design of what the various options might be.

There is more to be said on all of this, including the key issue of Direct Payments that were set at £15.04 today, but these will have to wait for the next post …

Care & Support tender process not meticulous or thorough!

The verdict is in.  The process undertaken by the council to put care and support services out to tender should be halted.  At last!

This coming Thursday, a reconvened meeting of the Finance and Resources Committee will be discussing the outcome of the independent review of the process (overview report available).  In December last year, Deloitte were commissioned (at a cost of about £80,000) to review the tendering process for these services.  The report from Deloitte received mid-January indicates that:

• the tendering process was neither as meticulous nor as thorough as might have been expected;
• the quality scorings of different tenders changed during the process; and
• the viability of the business case would need revisiting because of the higher than expected level of Direct Payment applications.

There are other fora to discuss the relative merits and details of the tenders, the quality rankings, and the Direct Payment levels.  What this review outcome does highlight, however, is a structural problem within the Council’s working.  Paul Edie, the Health, Housing and Social Care convener, stated several times, in public and private, that the process was robust, and that everything was fine.  Jenny Dawe, the Council Leader agreed with him.  Administration councillors flocked to their defense in meetings, brushing off the concerns of opposition councillors, some council officers, service users and their advocates, and union representatives, as mere politicking and scare-mongering.  However, it appears that the concerns were well justified; if a superficial review undertaken in less than a month finds holes in the process, surely they were there for administration councillors and officers to see all along?

We must ask, then, why it took several council meetings, campaign deputations, and in camera discussions for the powers that be to realise that there were serious flaws in the process?  Why did we need to cause so many vulnerable people so much distress?  Why did we allow them to be further marginalised?  Why did we ignore past experience of employees negatively affected by just such tendering processes?

I still struggle to find any convincing answers for these questions.  I can only assume that Paul Edie and his colleagues are so determined to be ‘just different’ to previous Council Administrations that they do not care about the impacts their callous decisions have on people.  They clearly didn’t show compassion in meetings with service users.  They did not appreciate the effects on staff that the loss of local service providers would have.  They did not seem to care that the loss of local providers, as larger contractors (the successful bidders) take over the service provision market, would have serious detrimental effects on communities and the people who live and work in them.

The current administration just doesn’t seem to care about people or communities; the short-term bottom line is all that matters to them.  I, personally, don’t want to be a part of a council that treats its residents in this way, and I am very glad that this fiasco has ended the way it has.  I am only sorry for all the distress caused in the mean time.  The next few months are going to be interesting indeed!