Campaign is launched to showcase innovative outcome-based commissioning in home care

Home care provider Mears and local democracy think tank, Local Government Information Unit, have joined forces and launched a campaign to showcase innovative outcome-based commissioning in home care.

The nationwide campaign will showcase innovative practice by local authorities and share councils’ experiences in outcome-based commissioning, payment by results and integration of domiciliary care with housing services.

The Local Government Information Unit (LGiU) carried out a survey of 113 adult social care departments, and found the majority of local authorities regard a shift to outcome-based commissioning as a ‘very important’ aspect of social care commissioning in the next five years.

However, three-quarters of councils feel that a ‘time-task culture’, in which people are allocated social care in short slots of time, is the biggest barrier to commissioning for outcomes.

Jonathan Carr-West, director of policy at the LGiU, said “Councils have to find the best way to incentivise providers to deliver outcomes to individuals instead of focusing on narrow financial and time-based targets. Our survey shows that local government is shifting its approach which is very welcome – despite cuts in funding we are seeing a smarter approach to commissioning.”

He added: “Nevertheless, councils are still concerned about how this will be achieved. Less than half of respondents say that outcomes are the basis for commissioning in all cases, while 75 per cent see a ‘culture of running services on a time-task basis’ as the main obstacle to moving this agenda forwards.”

Mears executive director Alan Long said: “It shouldn’t matter if a care provider delivers services in ten minutes or ten hours, what matters is achieving a personalized service for individuals and improving their wellbeing.

“We would like to see care providers paid on the outcomes they achieve whether this be reducing the numbers of hospital admissions or increasing freedom for family members and carers. While most local authorities support outcomes based commissioning, in most cases current tendering processes make delivering outcomes impossible.”