Issue - meetings

The Leader of the Council invited Chris Taylor of UNISON to put forward his deputation which had been received in respect of the Shared Lives report at agenda item 12.

In summary, Mr Taylor put forward reasons against the proposed outsourcing of the Shared Lives service and opposition to the Council entering into a social investment model with Shared Lives Incubator (SLI] together with an award of contract to Ategi Ltd for a period of five years for delivery of the Shared Lives service. This decision would also involve the TUPE transfer of 4 staff. These reasons were:

·         No evidence provided that outsourcing the service will help expand it and lead to growth in the number of carers. Mr Taylor argued that this could actually lead to less growth.

·         Council could recruit additional staff themselves if they wanted to grow the scheme.

·         Management had not answered questions on the barriers to the recruitment of carers .If the issue was the lack of referrals, then these numbers have historically been low and this issue not previously explored by the local authority. Also the proposed provider could not provide answers on how they could increase referrals.

·         The money the Council would need to borrow for supporting the running of the outsourced service and then pay back with an additional return for investors could instead be invested in the existing in house provision and an improvement plan.

·         The proposed provider did not guarantee London Living Wage to new employees and there would be a 2 tier workforce systems in place.

·         Although the provider was keeping transferred staff on existing Council terms and conditions, the Council would need to ensure that these agreements were kept to

The Cabinet Member for Finance and Health responded to the deputation and highlighted the common agreement expressed, that expansion of the service was needed. It was critical to deliver this through investment but by keeping the service in house, the Council could not provide the income required to grow this service to potentially also include older people and people with physical disabilities. Therefore the choice had been made to consider an outside provider.

It was critical to boost referrals from the Learning Disabilities Team but also to gather referrals for people with physical health needs and the elderly and provide them with   long term placements. Therefore in coming to this proposal, the Council had considered the experience of Ategi in both management and growth of other Shared Lives Services in the country and also noted the additional benefit the Council would gain from access to two senior managers in this organisation.

The Cabinet Member reiterated that the Council was committed to expanding the Shared Lives Service. In this arrangement, the investors were actually taking on the financial risk as they would not get a return until the 70% target of recruited carers was reached so this arrangement did provide good achievement of value for money.