Co-producing ideas for the implementation of Market Shaping

TLAP have commissioned a project to explore what is already happening and what needs to be developed around Clause 5 of the Care Act - market shaping. I am one of the independent consultants leading this piece of work, alongside Andrew Tyson, and we are working in conjunction with Community Catalysts to investigate what activities commissioners, providers and people who use services can undertake to help shape a diverse market place, and what support they need in order to do this well.

Having been involved in either commissioning or providing social care support services over the years since personalisation sprang onto the national agenda, I have followed with keen interest the progress of the Care Bill into the Care Act (2014) and am really excited to be involved in a piece of work with TLAP, (the Think Local Act Personal partnership) helping to develop thinking around it's implementation. Specifically, I and my colleague Andrew Tyson (who'll be doing our second blog in due course) are working with stakeholders all over the country to explore what commissioning for choice really looks like.

As a provider, I experienced applying for tenders and striving to jump through a variety of hoops to obtain approved status to enable us to offer services to individuals in a given area. Once they were using our services, we would of course look to be as person centred as we could in developing their individual service and support, but I was always acutely aware of the fact that the person themselves had not actually chosen us in the first place. This decision had been taken on their behalf by professionals, and whilst these were of course well-meaning professionals working on good information about the person and their needs, they also had a budget to balance and hoops of their own to jump through in terms of procurement procedures and other duties. This might not always pave the way for them to pay the best attention to what the person's aspirations and idiosyncrasies might be. We would find these out and adapt the support being provided accordingly, of course, over time, but it always struck me that when working with Direct Payment recipients or self-funders, our approach had to be far more person centred from the outset, and would, as a result, inevitably lead to a far superior quality of service being delivered from day one as we were able to tailor our offer straight away.

When working for a local authority, I found myself on the other side of the fence, liaising with providers to agree contract terms and hourly rates, for example, which helped us to manage our various duties both to individuals and to the state, but again, was conscious of the fact that with the best will in the world, this didn't always result in excellence in terms of each person's experience of being supported.

Clause 5 of the Act describes a new duty for local authorities to undertake market shaping activities to ensure real choice and control for everyone purchasing social care and support services, whether through a local authority managed budget, a direct payment, individual service fund or indeed, for self-funders. This is potentially a massive sea change for local authorities who have in the past relied on tendering for large amounts of service from one provider, leading to block contracts, or who use approved provider lists to restrict the market place in some way - all of which are sensible ways of managing public money and delivering efficient services, but not necessarily of providing real choice or control to the person on the receiving end.

For me, the market shaping duty is about ensuring that there is a wide variety of choice available with as little restriction as possible, to ensure people who require social care services and support can make real, informed choices and be in the driving seat of their provision from the outset. The market needs to include large and small providers, coming from a range of business models and organisation types, and be flexible enough to allow space for innovation and creative solutions if none of these quite fit what I personally want and need when I come to look for support. This is a real challenge, and the purpose of our work is to develop ideas and possibly tools and guidance to help commissioners implement this particular duty under the Act with real success.

As part of this project, we are looking to discover what is happening in areas where market shaping for choice and control is already underway, what activities commissioners, providers and people who use services can undertake to help shape a diverse market place, and what support they need in order to do this well. As well as inviting submissions of documents or strategies in use or in development and researching literature about new ways of commissioning, we will be facilitating three Focus Groups to provide a forum for anyone with an interest in market shaping to contribute their experience, ideas and comments. Click here to register to attend.

For anyone who is unable to come to one of the groups but who would like to contribute their thoughts and ideas there will also be a survey/questionnaire which complements the structure of the groups. We've got a hashtag #careactchoice, and will be blogging regularly throughout the project's life to keep people up to date with what is happening and to share what we're learning as we go.

So lot of ways to engage and to share your ideas and suggestions for how to make commissioning truly about individual choice. We hope to hear from you!