Challenges, opportunities and impact Annie Gunner Logan and Dee Fraser

Strategic commissioning and providers Opportunities To contribute expertise To shape the service landscape Challenges Finding a ‘way in’ Co-ordinating provider input Managing perceptions of conflict of interest Capacity Huge opportunities - these two are really just the shorthand. Almost everything published by government on public service reform from Changing Lives onwards is clear that providers often know much more about appropriate delivery models, what’s possible and what works, than commissioners do. The Christie Commission said so, and Audit Scotland said so, and so on. But the challenges are real. As I said earlier, CCPS is working closely with other third sector interests, including the TSIs, to work out how best to secure a ‘way in’ to the new partnerships for providers. And that will be start of the struggle! In relation to procurement specifically, the government has gone a very long way indeed to address our concerns, as far as it can, in legislation, and we’ll also have the opportunity to shape the new guidance. However a lot of the health and care stuff in it is enabling, ie. it allows authorities to do things differently, rather than compelling them to do so. So our challenge is, as perhaps it always has been, to influence the behaviours of local authorities.

Commissioning, procurement and SDS SDS legislation: Section 19: “For the purpose of making available to supported persons a wide range of support when choosing options for self-directed support, a local authority must, in so far as is reasonably practicable, promote— (a) a variety of providers of support, and (b) the variety of support provided by it and other providers.” Our Providers & Personalisation Programme succeeded in amending (and we might say, improving!) the SDS legislation through the introduction of Section 19. We are now working to promote this duty and to support authorities to give expression to it through the concept of market facilitation, which we see as part of the strategic commissioning cycle. A major challenge has arisen, namely that several authorities appear to be proposing to manage what they see as a tension between SDS and procurement by setting up framework tenders for Option 2. In other words, a person can choose their support and who provides it, but only from a list of pre-selected options put in place by the authority through a tender process. Is that what the legislators really meant to happen?