18 Aug Towards a national approach to Quality Assurance

All local authorities have a duty to ensure high standards of care for young people living in accommodation supplied by the private and voluntary sectors. However, the picture across the UK is one of fragmentation. Mapping work undertaken by Commissioning Alliance in late 2020 showed that while 83%* of the 151 top tier LAs use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to monitor their providers, there is no standardised template forwhat those KPIs should be. Even taking into account the estimated 22* local authority consortia across the country, this represents significant inconsistency, inefficiency, and duplication of effort for both local authorities and providers alike. Inefficiency which contributes to spiralling costs, with 91%* of local authorities exceeding their budget for children’s services (a total overspend of £872m*). Fragmentation also makes it very difficult for LAs and providers to come together to develop a shared understanding of quality and how to most effectively monitor and uphold standards.

This is a huge challenge, which no one local authority or provider could fix alone. We are therefore delighted to be embarking on a venture in partnership with Southampton City Council and South-Central Consortia (hosted by BCP Council)**. This project will see the development of an automated, aligned KPI set. The benefits this offers are multi-fold, including:

• Standardisation for providers
• Consistency of reporting across a wider placement area
• Reduction in duplication and manual inputting of data (saving time and cost)
• Better understanding of quality and the specific challenges faced by different sectors, provider groups and geographies
• Better and more valuable data, allowing for enhanced analytics & evidence-based commissioning improvements
• More targeted quality assurance activity.

Aligning the South-Central Consortia and the Commissioning Alliance will bring a consistent approach across almost 40 local authorities. We can now offer reporting to all service users on the amassed data, giving our partners greater understanding and strategic insight into the market. It will enable our teams to be much more targeted – supporting individual providers, addressing specific quality issues, and moving away from a more blanket approach to quality assurance.

This exciting project is a keystone in our broader strategy to facilitate LA and provider collaboration across the UK, streamlining working processes and freeing up capacity. We are looking to address the poor data flows that underpin many of the structural issues we face in the sector. Our medium-term aspiration is to work towards a nationally standardised KPI set, with a single tool for the collation and analysis of data.

Please do get in touch if you would like to learn more!

*Source: IFA Consortia Mapping, Sept 2020. Commissioning Alliance research on behalf of the LGA

** SCC are our lead partner for the consortia, with BCP handling the contract management on behalf of the group