Health & Social Care Forum Meeting 24th February 2010

Old Trafford Community Centre, Shrewsbury St, Old Trafford

Minutes

Attending
Name / Agency
Colin Barson / VCAT
Maya Sharma / VCAT (Chair)
Craig Almond / VCAT (Minutes)
Ann Day / Trafford LINk & Lostock Community Partnership
Jo Bryan / Trafford Adult Social Services
Anna Walsh / Elizabeth FitzRoy Support
John Astbury / Light of Hope CIC
Kate Williams / Partington Healthy Living Centre
Bart Frith / Trafford Adult Social Services
Anne Marie Jones / Age Concern Trafford
Karen Patel / Age Concern Trafford
Sue Martin / Trafford Carers Centre
Joanne Holt / Genie Networks
Robert Hincks / The Stroke Association
Sam Turner / Henshaws
Sarah Vickers / Trafford Council
Beth Innes / Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People
Marjorie Fleming / Trafford Branch Parkinsons
Aly Gell / Trafford Mental Health Advocacy Service
John Platt / Genie Networks
Ruth Walkden / Trafford LINk
Tony Wright / Voice of BME Trafford
Vera Martins
Karen Heggarty / 42nd Street
42nd Street
Apologies:
Denise Francis / Trafford Housing Trust
Judie Collins / Friends of John Leigh Park
Gemma Thompson / United Response
Julie Holmes / Trafford Young Carers
Elaine Craven / Trafford Housing Trust
Barbara Bleeker / Trafford CVS & Volunteer Centre
Martin White / Trafford Adult Social Services
Sue Parkes / Relate GMS
Penny Cunliffe / Parkinsons Disease Society
Paul King / Autistic Society Greater Manchester Area
Alister Rowe / TAAG

1) Welcomes, Introductions and Minutes of Last Meeting

Maya Sharma (MS) welcomed everyone to the meeting, and asked them to introduce themselves.

The minutes of the last meeting were accepted by the forum. No specific action points were arising. Colin Barson (CB) gave the meeting an update on Trafford’s Comprehensive Area Assessment.

Trafford Council has received two red flags (1 for Health Inequalities and 1 for the complicated nature of its partnership arrangements.) The Trafford Partnership is currently being remodelled and CB promised to update the forum once the partnership model has been finalised.

He said that the other red flag had moved Health Inequalities up the agenda although no other actions have yet been decided. Ann Day (AD) pointed out that Health Inequalities have been on the local agenda for at least two years. CB said that the Health & Social Care Forum would be ideally placed to be involved in dialogue with the new Health Partnership on how Inequalities are addressed.

2) Terms of Reference & Developing the Forum.

MS has worked with John Astbury (JA) and Kate Williams (KW) to draft Terms of Reference for the Forum. The draft document was circulated to the full mailing list in time for the meeting, with a request for feedback.

The Terms of Reference is an important document because it outlines the aims and structures of the forum and will be used as the base for making future plans.

JA & KW said that no feedback had been received since the document was circulated. JA said that this was either because they had got it broadly right or was a sign of lack of interest from members.

JA said that the only possible contentious issue was to make a distinction between full members of the forum (people representing VCS groups working in the Health & Social Care field) and supporting members (statutory sector and other partners). Full members will receive all bulletins, be invited to all meetings and have voting rights on decisions made by the forum. Supporting members will receive all bulletins but may not be invited to some closed meetings, they will also not have voting rights.

MS said that she had recently been approached by a person who had successfully applied for Trafford Innovation Funding to deliver a HSC service but was acting as an individual not part of a community group. Should that individual be able to access the support of the Forum?

A discussion on this point followed, overall it was felt that full membership over the forum be kept to agencies and representatives of the third sector. Individuals working in the field on their own behalf should be able to access information from the group and attend appropriate meetings, so the supporting membership was most appropriate. If consequently they decided to form their service into a registered charity, Community Interest Company or other recognisable third sector organisation then they could access full membership.

Bart Frith (BF) said that if someone who had received Innovations Funding then they were entitled to support from the Innovation Group and the market development team.

Action Points

·  Re-write terms of Supporting Membership to include individuals or non-third sector groups working in the HSC field or individuals with any other interest in the HSC field (MS / JA / KW)

·  Build links between HSC Forum and Innovation Group, Sue Martin (SM) volunteered herself and Trafford Carers Centre to lead on this role.

MS asked for volunteers to work with her and JA and KW to form a steering group for the forum. MS said that although herself and Craig Almond (CA) were supporting the forum at the moment as part of their roles within the BASIS project. This funding runs out next year and it is hoped by that time, the forum can become independent and self-sufficient. The steering group will initially give guidance to MS & CA in the direction the forum takes but eventually play a key role in giving independence to the forum. No volunteers were forthcoming at the meeting, MS said she would approach potential volunteers directly after the meeting.

CB asked that as special interest groups are developed that they be aligned with the eventual structure of the Trafford Partnership so that relationships be developed between the Partnership and the Third Sector. The meeting felt that although this was a good idea they didn’t want to mirror the structure of the partnership too closely.

MS said that when the Forum was initially being developed it had been given the title of “Trafford Voluntary & Community Sector Health & Social Care Forum”, this was a fairly clumsy and she had sought suggestions for a snappier title but so far nothing had been forthcoming. The meeting decided that they would use the title “Trafford Health & Social Care Forum”.

3) Greater Manchester Health & Well Being Consortium

Sam Turner(ST) from Henshaws gave the meeting a brief overview of the proposed GMHWB Consortium. ST has been part of the working group that has been putting together proposals for the consortium. His own experience as a fundraiser at Henshaws has been that as an organisation they are too small and too specialised to win the larger public sector contracts that are currently being tendered for, and do not have the experience in tendering that private sector organisations have. This experience has been common throughout the VCS in GM.

The working group has been facilitated by Neil Coulson (consultant) who has experience in developing a similar consortium for the Sheffield region.

The consortium will bring partnerships together and provide the technical support necessary in interpreting contract and tendering documents.

The consortium will work on a hub-and-spoke model. The hub (Consortium staff) will collect information on potential tenders, identify the appropriate partners for each bid, write the tender document and manage the monitoring and delivery of the contract.

Spokes (individual VCS agencies) will decide which partnerships they wish to apply for and deliver the service. The hub will take responsibility for allocating the cash. Spokes will be organised into themed clusters.

The GM Hub will be supported by, but distinct from Greater Manchester Council for Voluntary Organisations (GMCVO).

Commissioners increasingly want a single point of contact in managing contracts (which the hub will provide the VCS is often seen as too widespread and disparate to deal with. The consortium will only be looking to deal with large contracts. VCS consortia are a relatively new phenomena but those already up and running are already dealing with multi-million pound cashflows. This is money that would otherwise have gone to the private sector and that is potentially being missed by the VCS in GM.

A two-tier membership model is currently being proposed, Full members will have to pass strict Quality Standards to be accepted and be able to apply to be part of any contract. Associate members will have to meet lower quality criteria but only be able to apply for a limited number of contracts. They will be given support and guidance to develop into full members.

At the moment there are no consortium members, as the membership process opens ST will feed info to MS for dissemination.

Funding has been applied for to create the consortium, once this is secured a director will be recruited who will take responsibility for recruitment of member organisations. Future finding of the hub will come from a 5% top-slice on all contracts. This reflects the risk that they will take in developing each tender and also the costs involved on day-to-day management of each contract. The consortium will allow funding opportunities that currently most VCS groups are too small to access.

A wide ranging discussion then followed on the risks and benefits of adopting this model. Amongst the topics discussed were:

Is the consortium an unnecessary extra structure when budgets within the sector are about to be tightened?

Will the 5% management fees be factored into the consortium bid or taken directly from partners’ budgets?

Could members form competing partnerships independently from the consortium?

Action Point

·  MS to ask ST to return to a future forum meeting when the precise nature of the consortium will be known

·  Forum members to give MS specific questions or issues they wish to raise about the consortium, at that meeting (all members)

4) Influencing Trafford Adult Social Care commissioning practices

Jo Bryan (JB) (formerly of Trafford Carers Centre) has been seconded for a year to work as Commissioning and Service Development Manager at Trafford Adult Social Care. She delivered a presentation explaining her role and how VCS groups could be involved in influencing the HSC agenda in Trafford. A copy of the presentation is attached

5) Trafford Mental Health Providers Framework

Sarah Vickers (SV) Procurement Manager for Trafford Adult Social Services took questions regarding the process used to set up an approved providers framework for Mental health Services in Trafford.

Those groups who had been through the process found it a profoundly negative experience and this influenced the feedback SV received.

Feedback included:

The process was non-inclusive

Tendering paperwork was difficult to complete, and off-putting to read. Smaller and even medium sized VCS groups struggled to complete the paperwork.

Groups and staff members new to the process found that it was time consuming to complete and for organisations with a small workforce this detracted from time spent on service delivery.

Vera Martin (VM) representing 42nd Street said that she had experience of working on similar processes throughout the GM area and that the Trafford Framework had proved to be the most onerous to complete.

The forms were received just before the Xmas break with short and non-negotiable deadlines

It was felt to be a very different process from the Innovations Fund which was designed to support organisations new to the tendering process

The publicity regarding the framework process had not been successful, with some groups not finding out about the opportunity at all and others finding out very close to the application deadline.

A great amount of dissatisfaction was expressed that this is intended to be a once every 3 year process, which means that groups that missed this opportunity or who were declined for whatever reason will have to wait three years to become a listed provider. Groups who were successful this time round felt unhappy that they would have to go through it all again in three years time,

It was felt that the process would be biased in favour of larger and private sector organisations who have time, resources and experience to devote to bid-writing.

There was a call for Adult Social Services to recognise the costs for VCS groups in completing bids,

BF, JB & SV fielded questions and tried to explain the thinking behind the process.

A Public Procurement Process is a legal requirement for any contract awarded over £50k. Information sought includes: Company info, Insurance details, Company Structures and Financial Information. All potential contractors need to be asked the same questions.

Trafford can commit to supporting smaller groups in completing the paperwork and had held workshops during the Mental Health Framework process. Groups that had gone through the process said that they had not been aware of the workshops or had missed them through other commitments.

The Mental Health Framework was a streamlined process from the earlier Learning Disability Framework.

Trafford Mental Health Framework was designed to make quality assurance as rigorous as possible. BF said that this linked in with work the Putting People First team were undertaking with personalised budgets. Creating a quality benchmark that can be used to signpost budget holders towards approved service providers

SV pointed out that there are now 30 organisations on the Mental Health Framework who consequently have the opportunity to log on to CHEST (the council’s automated e-procurement web portal), the work done in getting on the framework means that they do not have to repeat the process each time the tender for work through the CHEST system.