Charities claim their slice of Cameron’s ‘big society’ pie

The voluntary sector could offer “gain without pain” to councils and NHS agencies if it was entrusted with the care and support of more disabled people, a report suggests.

Millions of pounds of savings could be made by charities already responsible for care contracts worth more than £1bn a year, according to the report by the Institute of Public Care at Oxford Brookes University.

However, the umbrella body that commissioned the report is warning that many council and NHS commissioners must change their attitudes, and embrace a culture of collaboration with the voluntary sector, if the full potential for savings is to be realised.

Bill Mumford, chairman of the body, the Voluntary Organisations Disability Group, said: “The cuts in public spending make it all the more necessary to find new ways of working and we need the public sector to work with us, not against us.”

The report studies 10 examples of care and support being taken over by voluntary groups and made both more cost-effective and more innovative and personalised.

In one case, the Papworth Trust was found to have saved £385 a week for each person with a learning disability who was moved from long-term NHS care into their own homes in Suffolk and Bedfordshire.

In a second case, the charity MCCH was found to have achieved net savings to the public purse of £117,000 a year after it took over and modernised services for learning disabled people in Bexley, south London,

The highest potential savings identified were in Bath and North East Somerset, where Neurological Commissioning Support, a joint venture of the MS Society, Motor Neurone Disease Association and the Parkinson’s Disease Society, has worked with state agencies to improve end-of-life care. In one instance, at-home care for people with motor neurone disease who have breathing difficulties is costed at £1,000 each a month, compared with £45,000 a month for unplanned hospital treatment.

Mumford said the report chimed with the spirit of the “big society” being encouraged by the coalition government, cutting bureaucracy and costs while responding creatively to people’s needs.

“David Cameron says building the big society is his great passion. My passion is showing how the voluntary sector can be central to this vision and how, in spite of the financial crisis, disability charities can provide imaginative, cost-effective services that do what service users ask of them. Gain can be achieved without pain.”

Significantly, the report is endorsed by the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, representing local authority social care commissioners.

In a foreword, association president Richard Jones says: “The journey we are on in terms of transformation is a shared enterprise and requires all of us to collaborate and learn if we are to achieve reform and avoid retrenchment. More of the same will not work.”