Supporting People
Five Year Strategy
Ongoing management, development and review arrangements
for the programme
This section sets out some of our current thinking around how
the Supporting People programme will develop and will be managed in
future years. It is likely that as the planning and delivery
framework for the Community Strategy continues to evolve, planning
for the delivery of Supporting People services will be incorporated
into this.
Programme Management and Review
In preparation for inspection by the Audit Commission which is
due to take place in June 2005, the Supporting People team and
Commissioning Body have been active in reviewing current
administrative arrangements and governance. This has been
facilitated by the “Key Lines of Enquiry” (KLOE) document published
on the Supporting People website in November 2004. Self
assessment in relation to KLOE has highlighted a number of
programme areas which need to be addressed in order for the local
programme to achieve a positive inspection outcome. These can
be summarised, in order of priority as:
- Clarifying governance and reporting lines, adopting a
consistent approach to assessing value for money and continuing to
develop a robust approach to diversity
- Strengthening partnership arrangements and increasing
commitment to meaningful service user involvement
- Carrying out more robust and formalised service reviews and
focusing on outcomes for service users
We are currently confident in the overall delivery of the
programme (comments above notwithstanding), have a clear direction
of travel for future years and are managing our finances prudently,
with projected spend for the current financial year (2004/05)
showing only a 0.04% deficit overall.
Appendix 8 shows our current position in relation the
Audit Commission’s “Key Lines Of Enquiry” document and our proposed
areas of action for achieving improvements in line with inspection
requirements.
Risk management and contingency planning
A number of risks associated with the delivery of the programme
have been identified and these can be broadly grouped into the
following categories:
- Administration resources
- Supporting People allocation
- Provider performance
- Protection of SP resources
- Commissioning Body performance
- SP Team performance
- Strategy development mechanisms
Appendix 9 sets out identified risks in more detail and
our proposals for mitigating against identified risks.
Statement and review of local charging policy
The Supporting People charging policy has been in effect since
the start of the programme in April 2003. As part of the
development of this strategy the policy has been reviewed and a
revised document has been circulated for consultation. The
review has highlighted a number of areas of inconsistency and/or
inequality in the way in which charges have been applied for
Supporting People services and has also identified further capacity
for income generation.
A review briefing and the final revised charging policy can be
found at Appendix 10.
