LAF’s recent seminars on Supporting People raised a range of concerns and issues for voluntary sector providers. In particular, smaller organisations were concerned about the impact on their staff, users and administrative systems. We asked Joe Kent from the Leeds City Council Supporting People Team about the Council’s plans for supporting smaller organisations through the changes. 

One to one

Firstly, the Supporting People Team is committed to one to one liaison. Every provider organisation has a personal contact within the Team who has already been in touch with them and will have visited them last year. This person acts as a point of contact to ensure consistency, build trust, disseminate information and to identify issues that may need additional advice and support. They will have asked about training needs during their visits and will be taking them through the contract discussions. In return, each organisation now has a Lead Officer who will act as a single point of contact between the Supporting People Team and that organisation. Again. this ensures consistent and reliable communication. The Lead Officer is also the person who is invited to attend briefing sessions with the Team. When we receive enquiries from other people in a 'Supporting People' organisation we tend to refer them to their lead officer in the first instance so that information can be cascaded within organisations.

Financial Toolkit

The Team worked extremely hard to develop a 'Toolkit' designed to take organisations through final adjustments to Transitional Housing Benefit (THB). The toolkit helped organisations of all sizes to get the split between rent and support costs right and thus prepared them well for Supporting People. The Toolkit has proved extremely popular and has been widely acclaimed. More importantly, it is recognised by Leeds Benefitsn Service. This means that if you are using the toolkit, you have a  good basis for presenting any changes in THBS, making the process much easier for smaller organisations.

Training and networking

The Team also subsidised the recent seminars for frontline workers run by LAF, and provided speakers to explain the issues and answer questions. This gave smaller organisations an opportunity to make links with other groups and hear how other organisations, large and small, are approaching some of the issues.

Benchmarking

We are in the process of getting a benchmarking project off the ground which should prove invaluable for smaller organisations. This is something that providers specifically requested and we have found the funding to make this happen. The Team has written the brief and has now handed the process on to a group of voluntary sector organisations who have responsibility for taking this forward. The project will enable organisations to work together and make comparisons on key issues which will highlight good practice and point to areas that need strengthening.

Reviews

When developing the review timetable, the Core Strategy Development Group has approved the following set of guiding criteria which includes significant acknowledgement to small providers:

• To co-ordinate the Leeds Supporting People reviews with other relevant, committed programmes, reviews and strategies including Housing Corporation SHMG (Supported Housing Management Grant) reviews, Probation and Best Value reviews.
• To timetable an early review for services that require support and development through the new requirements of the Supporting People programme. This will be identified by the Leeds Provider Healthcheck process.
• Ask providers what preferences they have and which services they have good reasons for nominating for review at a particular time.
• To consider carefully services that are in the upper cost ranges compared to similar services.
• To manage the impact on other mainstream budgets of service development and de-registration of residential care homes through staged reviews.
• To maintain and encourage diversity of providers and service provision within Leeds.

Leeds Supporting People Provider Healthcheck

The Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DTLR), which is ultimately responsible for Supporting People, has withdrawn the proposed Accreditation process in its' current form.  Instead, Leeds will be sending out a Provider Healthcheck questionnaire in order to:

• assist with constructing the review timetable
• assist with a broad risk assessment
• act as a co-ordinating mechanism
• assess provider IT capacity and needs

This will be an early indication for providers of the issues to be raised at reviews and will particularly assist smaller organisations to consider any capacity building issues they may have.

National Support

Nationally, the DTLR is concerned about small providers and has commissioned work to develop an IT based benchmarking tool. This will be focused on 'continuous improvement' so that while smaller organisations may not have all the policies and accredited processes of larger providers, they can still demonstrate progress and build their capacity. This should be available in the near future. The DTLR has also funded regional posts specifically to support small providers,  refuge provision and specialist  provision such as Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) providers.