Tailored CareCubed support for new clients

Fourteen local authorities are currently receiving tailored implementation support from iESE partner Peopletoo as part of an offer to help new customers implement and embed CareCubed into their organisations.

he fourteen councils are taking advantage of a comprehensive package made up of system training, negotiation skills training and a mix of coaching, process workshops and support based on top local priorities. After buying the product, Peopletoo work with new clients to understand the current challenges and opportunities and work to accelerate the delivery of benefits for our customers.

Rosie Thomas-Easton, Service Director at Peopletoo, said: “We create a bespoke package of support specific to that council and specific to the pressures they find themselves under most, such as increasing costs for specialist commissioning placements and significant cost ranges across residential care provision. We tailor the implementation of CareCubed to help them tackle their biggest challenges, but always with one eye on the future. It is not just tackling current financial pressures and sufficiency gaps, it is about working to ensure that the approach we are supporting councils to build and embed enables them to manage costs and sufficiency in the future, too.” she explained.

The aim is that the implementation support package is delivered within the first three months, but Peopletoo allow flexibility, recognising the pressures local authorities face. Thomas-Easton said that while most of the fourteen local authorities were ’in flight’, some quick wins had already been made: “One recent example was highlighting to one commissioning team that they were commissioning 27 hours of 1:1 support for an individual in a day – now that may sound tiny but over time that builds up and carries considerable unnecessary cost. There is a lot of low-hanging fruit, and organisations are achieving the goals set out in the business case for CareCubed. It is wonderful to see the immediate impact that the tool and our services can make.”

The authorities are also making progress on longer-term issues, such as sustainability. For example, one organisation carried out a mini cost of care exercise on their Support Living market: “The perception of the local authority was that they were managing costs well and within budget, but from a market perspective it was difficult. There had to be some challenging but mature conversations about how to build and sustain the market moving forward which we were very happy to support,” she added.

Peopletoo aims to involve all parties involved in care provision to ensure a collaborative approach. Another key benefit is that they have been able to link up organisations facing similar challenges to enable them to share learning. “This is invaluable because often historically they may have felt unable to talk about their commissioning problems with anyone else, but now they can lean on iESE, Peopletoo, and more than 550 other Local Authority users of the tool in the CareCubed Community,” Thomas-Easton added.

Working with Peopletoo on the implementation of CareCubed is not only getting us up and running but also helping us understand gaps in our information and inefficiencies in our placement process for children and young people in residential accommodation. Peopletoo have kept us focused to ensure we get the most out of our purchase of CareCubed and have been very flexible to our changeable needs and pressures from management.

Charlotte Humble, Head of Children’s Commissioning, Southend-on-Sea Council.

Peopletoo have been a great support for us in beginning our implementation of CareCubed. They have shown flexibility and understanding of our competing priorities and been able to move to support us in just the way we need. I hope that over the coming months our efforts to embed processes designed to suit to our particular setup will improve our effectiveness as commissioners, by providing evidence-based rigour to our negotiations and support us to manage costs in partnership with our providers in a sustainable way.

Vicky Critchley-Roper, Specialist Commissioning, Bath and North East Somerset Council.

To find out more about Peopletoo visit: www.peopletoo.co.uk.

To find out more about the consultancy support offer contact: rosie.thomas-easton@peopletoo.co.uk.