Decision details

Domiciliary Care Re-Commissioning

Decision Maker: Cabinet

Decision status: Recommendations Approved

Is Key decision?: Yes

Is subject to call in?: Yes

Purpose:

To consider the report of the Cabinet Member for Health and Adult Social Care, seeking approval for Southampton City Council and the Southampton City Clinical Commissioning Group to work together to recommission the Adult Domiciliary Care framework across the City in 2014.
The domiciliary care market within Southampton currently provides care for approximately 1,810 people in any given week. It accounts for a £18.07 million spend and there are currently up to 75 providers working in the city and delivering care packages.
Due to its size and importance in terms of meeting service user needs and enabling the city to meet its strategic requirements, it is essential that domiciliary care provision achieves high standards of delivery, quality and value for money.
Recommissioning these services supports three main outcomes:
•To improve quality within domiciliary care services
•To ensure the best value available within the market
•To ensure services are able to respond to changing needs and demands.

SCC wish to commission external provision to deliver additional activity that is required due to increasing needs within the city.

The increasing demographic changes and the emphasis on recovery and prevention within the city’s transformational change programme, requires the option to potentially award reablement services to external providers, should it be identified that meeting demand and improving outcomes will be more effectively achieved through this arrangement.

Decision:

(i)  To approve the pre­-tender considerations and the criteria to be used to evaluate tenders.

(ii)  To delegate authority to the Director, People to invite tenders and evaluate them in accordance with the recommended evaluation criteria.

(iii)  To note that the award of the contract will be considered by Council or Cabinet as appropriate as detailed in the procurement timetable listed in Section 13 of this report.

Reasons for the decision:

  1. The changes will:

·  Improve quality within domiciliary care services

·  Ensure the best value available within the market

·  Ensure services are able to respond to changing needs and demands.

·  Support the development of personalisation across the city

  1. A framework agreement is advantageous because it offers a structured legal framework to contract over a 4 year period.  This provides stability to the successful providers enabling officers to work with them to build capacity within the market. The framework would therefore also provide:
    • Increased flexibility with changes in demand.

·  Support of personalisation and Individual Service Fund (ISF) approaches, thereby creating more choice and control for users.

·  Offers better value for money

 

 

Alternative options considered:

  1. To take no action would mean we are not working within the Council’s Contract Procedure Rules.
  2. To undertake a cost and volume contract would not be in line with the personalisation agenda, nor would it provide commissioners with flexibility across the city to meet additional capacity demands as they arose.

Report author: Kate Dench

Publication date: 17/12/2013

Date of decision: 17/12/2013

Decided at meeting: 17/12/2013 - Cabinet

Effective from: 28/12/2013

Accompanying Documents: