Service Reviews – Outline Business Case - Somerset County Council

(Cabinet – 2 May 2012)
Personalising care is seen as a critical change to deliver greater customer satisfaction
and improved outcomes by offering more choice and control. It is the foundation of
current national policy for adult social care and will continue to feature in the new Adult
Social Care White Paper, to be published later in 2012. Personal Budgets will, over time,
lead to people making different choices about the social care services that they receive,
and will provide additional incentives for service providers to personalise their response to
each individual. It will require providers to operate in a way that embraces and responds
quickly to customer need and market changes. The LDPS cannot respond fully to these
challenges in its current form as remaining as part of the county council precludes
providing services funded Direct Payments.
The options considered in this outline business case are 1 :
1. To keep the services in-house, but continue to remodel them through a Service Plan
2. To externalise the LDPS to a Local Authority Controlled Company
3. To outsource the entire LD LDPS through a competitive process
Summary of Advantages
Summary of Disadvantages
Remain in the county council and continue to redesign and deliver efficiencies.
• Low or no short term impact on customers.
• Retains skills, expertise, knowledge and
existing service levels.
• No additional or double funding of corporate
overheads, including Southwest One
• Retains direct provision within the public
sector which many carers indicated a
preference for as part of initial feedback
events
• Least likely to generate anxiety and change
resistance.
• Maintaining the in-house provision avoids
the risk of market failure, with its consequent
dangers for vulnerable people and SCC's
ability to meet its statutory responsibilities,
as well as cost and reputational implications.
• Does not incur short term change costs
Whole service externalisation
• During the initial feedback meetings with
family carers they expressed an
overwhelming preference for a transfer to a
“not for profit” organisation, should the
service not be retained within SCC. This
could be ensured through an externalisation
process.
• Unable to provide services funded by direct
payments (DPs). As more customers take
advantage of DPs there is significant risk to
the County Council of them choosing
alternative providers, therefore increasing
unit costs.
• Retaining the LDPS in-house would require
significant investment particularly relating to
capital spend.
• Inflexibilities in SCC corporate overhead
costs means that the potential to maximise
long term revenue savings will be more
limited than either externalisation or open
market tender.
• Limited flexibility as some SCC decision
making processes reduce responsiveness,
particularly around HR, recruitment and
arranging appropriate accommodation to
meet customer needs
• Limited opportunities for capital investment,
sharing overheads with independent
provision or offering services to people
using direct payments during the initial
contract period of 3 years while subject to
the Teckal exemption. As more customers
take advantage of DPs there is significant
1 Further consideration needs to be given to the model for employment support services as part of the
development of a full business case for any option that is taken forward
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