Children's services procurement 'too costly and bureaucratic'
Neil Puffett
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Organisations representing 400 providers of services for children have called on Communities Secretary Eric Pickles to address the spiralling cost and bureaucracy of delivering services on behalf of local authorities.
In a letter to Pickles, the bodies representing fostering providers, children's homes and special schools, say that procurement is too focused on cost rather than the needs of the child, is too bureaucratic and takes up too much staff time.
The Nationwide Association of Fostering Providers (NAFP), the Independent Children’s Home Association (ICHA) and the National Association of Independent Schools and Non-Maintained Special Schools (NASS) - which together represent 400 providers of children’s services, have called on Pickles to intervene.
The concerns were identified following a survey conducted by the organisations that found providers are spending increasing amounts of time filling in forms and that staff are regularly diverted from frontline services to manage "burgeoning bureaucracy associated with local authority contracts".
The organisations have called for a new national procurement framework that could be followed by all local authorities to reduce paperwork for providers and ensure long-term sustainability of services.
Claire Dorer, chief executive of NASS, said: “Fostering, special education and children’s residential child care are distinct areas of service provision and our three organisations have received reports from members on the increasing time being spent on procurement-related activity.
“It was this that prompted us to join together to carry out a survey with members, exploring their experiences of local authority procurement.
“Our survey shows that the current system is simply unsustainable and that unless radical ways can be found of cutting costs that vital services will be threatened.”