Welfare Reform Green Paper

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Welfare Reform Green Paper

• Edinburgh consultation event
• Thursday 9 October

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Identifying the challenges

• 80 employment rate
• 1 million off Incapacity Benefit by 2015
• Eradication of child poverty by 2020
• Provide equality for disabled people by 2025

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Three key principles for reform
The changes proposed will be undertaken with
three key principles in mind
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The direction

• Support with responsibility
• Personalisation
• Simplification
• Devolution
• to individuals
• to local partnerships
• to providers

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Chapter Seven Empowerment and devolution a
new way of delivering our services

• A triple devolution of power to individual
  customers, local partnerships and providers
• to improve the quality and effectiveness of
  services by
• bringing together Government programmes
• giving customers increased powers to choose
  providers
• giving providers greater freedom to innovate
  through a new Right to Bid process
• giving a bigger role to local partnerships in
  developing, monitoring and letting contracts

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Devolution/localisation (1)

• Green Paper sets out three potential levels of
  devolution
• Level 1 local partners having active involvement
  in DWP commissioning processes.
• Level 2 co-commissioning and joint investment
  planning.
• Level 3 full joint commissioning in some areas,
  and devolution of some funding decisions in
  others.

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Devolution/localisation (2)

• Potentially major implications for providers and
  commissioners.
• Work underway to establish how the three tiers
  might operate in practice, which services
  comprise the national spine and what is
  flexible locally.
• Strong links with Integrated Employment and
  Skills agenda and early work on co-commissioning
  trials in West Midlands, Manchester, Glasgow etc.

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Consultation Questions on Devolution

• What would the processes around contributing to
  commissioning and performance management look
  like in a range of different partnership areas?
• How might they best be managed to achieve the
  desired outcomes?
• How could a link be made to the AME DEL proposals
  which seek to reward providers for outcomes out
  of the benefit savings they achieve?
• How effective are current monitoring and
  evaluation arrangements for City Strategies?

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Right to Bid

• Green Paper restated DWP intention to implement a
  right to bid process.
• aim is to encourage innovative thinking from
  providers and other organisations about ways to
  tackle longstanding systemic problems.
• we will build a system that is relatively simple
  to access, but is consistent with the legal and
  contracting framework in which we operate.
• every serious idea will be evaluated and reasons
  will be given if we do not proceed.
• Commitment to have a process in place by the
  autumn

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Question 26 Right to Bid

• What information would providers need to make the
  Right to Bid effective?
• How would the evaluation process need to work to
  give providers confidence that their ideas would
  be evaluated fairly and effectively?
• How do we get the balance right between rewarding
  those who come up with new ideas and the
  obligation to tender projects?

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Multi Client Contracts

• Green Paper flags Governments interest in a
  single employment programme for both ESA and JSA
  customers.
• DWP looking to pilot this potentially in some
  fND Phase 2 areas and will want to work with
  providers on the detail.
• Huge challenges around single conditionality
  regime, funding models, allocation of resources,
  safeguards for customers etc.
• potential benefits, particularly around economies
  of scale, simplification and rationalisation of
  contracts.

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Some additional thoughts from us

• Too soon to give a definitive big picture at
  this point, but there are clear implications for
  the market. No doubt that pace, scale and
  complexity of commissioning activity will
  increase.
• Where next, and how best to engage with provider
  community and others to communicate that big
  picture as impact on contracting timelines and
  procurement exercises becomes clearer?
• On specific measures, lots of detail to work
  through with you and provider community how
  best to do that?