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CareCubed Aids Partnership Working for Surrey County Council
Surrey County Council (SCC) is now using CareCubed across both its Adults and Children's Services to provide a consistent approach and robust evidence base to support placement pricing discussions with care providers.
The Council's Adult Services Team has engaged with care providers through the Surrey Care Association to share details of how CareCubed is going to be used and the benefits it will bring to local providers.
CareCubed gives a platform for the council and providers to collaborate on placements, a benchmark cost based on market data and a structured way of understanding unique offerings of providers and reflecting their costs.
The initial focus was residential care settings ranging from very small family run businesses right through to large national care providers. Jez Taylor, Head of Contract & Commissioning Support Service at SCC, said: "One provider recently requested an increase in funding, and very quickly we were able to assess the request and agree an uplift with them based on CareCubed. Without a nationally-recognised benchmarking tool it was very difficult to know exactly what we were paying for and whether we were being charged a fair price. As a commissioning authority, we have a duty to get value from the public purse whilst also recognising our providers are businesses which need to turn a profit.
CareCubed is being used by both commissioners and providers as a 'common currency' and SCC is working in partnership with a large national care provider, which also subscribes to CareCubed, to carry out some whole service reviews. This will give a complete picture of care settings across all service users so that there is clarity on the total service funding and resource requirement and fees can be 'levelled up' where required so that new placements and legacy ones are on an even footing. "There is a lot of variation on the fees being paid where the support need might be very similar, which can be difficult to explain. This needs to be understood and addressed so that pricing is fair and sustainable. Once this process is complete it will make it much easier for us to plan and budget for annual reviews and uplift based on CareCubed. This will avoid placements 'drifting' away from the benchmark rate and recreating the issue we are unpicking now, " Taylor added.
The council is now starting work at looking at its Supported Living services and has been working closely with iESE and a provider to add some new models which will handle the breadth of services offered. The functionality in CareCubed continues to develop based on changes in the market and direct input from iESE’s growing customer base of both local authorities and care providers.
If you’re interested in hearing more about collaborative work with CareCubed contact Craig at: craig.white@iese.org.uk
For more information about CareCubed, you can visit: https://iese.org.uk/project/carecubed-providers
