It was in early 2011 that Hertfordshire county council tendered for a new shared managed services contract for ICT, HR, finance and facilities management support. Hertfordshire also challenged the organisations who were tendering to present a number of innovative business cases to deepen their customer services offering within the county council.
When we read the concepts that Serco developed in response to our invitation, we were particularly pleased to see a number of solutions that directly addressed the key goals of any adult social care team – that people or carers can reach the right person to assess their needs as quickly as possible, and then receive the services they need rapidly and efficiently.
The ability to achieve this goal is set to become ever-more important in the years ahead, as the impact of demographic change on adult social care budgets and services becomes ever stronger.
Hertfordshire is already showing that a new approach to managing assessment processes can have a dramatic positive effect on the time and costs involved in delivering a high quality service.
A year of further development followed Serco's initial tender, during which time we paid particular attention to involving our own staff in the final design of the services, so ensuring that by the time we launched the new portfolio on 1 April this year they were completely happy with and supportive of it.
This is already paying dividends for both the council and those people receiving our social care services, through reduced recording processes and time involved in meeting service needs.
In fact, delivering a new approach to several aspects of our core social care assessment services is already showing a range of speed and efficiency benefits. The council and Serco are showing how innovation extends beyond technology to embrace care practice, management of qualified professionals and statutory functions.
For example, we wished to go beyond simply putting higher levels of information, advice and guidance in the hands of our customer service centre advisors so we have now transferred over 100 social care posts to a new Serco social care access service. These staff carry out our eligibility assessments and service-finding for those people we support and for their carers.
There is a legal requirement for every social care assessment decision to be signed off by the local authority. However, on the basis that these statutory decisions typically take around 20% of a manager's time, our legal advisors proposed that the council should continue to employ the 17 professionally qualified managers in the service for 20% of their working time through a dual contract with the council.
This simple solution is proving to be highly successful in enabling service users to receive more from a single point of contact without inefficient authorisation processes.
In a similar vein, we were keen to empower Serco to refer cases to the county's enablement homecare service, which is delivered across Hertfordshire by Saga Homecare.
Currently, around half of the people who are referred to the service do not need on-going services after up to six weeks, as they recover from illness or regain their confidence after an accident. The direct involvement of the council is often now not required in these cases.
To prevent the risk of one organisation's processes inadvertently impacting on another's, we have set up a three-way partnership board, with Serco, Saga and the council, ensuring that all decisions, issues and problems are shared and resolved.
Serco also undertakes scheduled and unscheduled care reviews for the council, carrying out any minor adjustments that may be required but passing more complex cases or safeguarding concerns though to the council's locality social work teams for a more extended intervention. Such an approach strips out unnecessary layers of administrative complexity through leaner processes, which ensure that our 12,000 service-users gain the support they need faster and more effectively.
In Hertfordshire, the success of inviting a third party to make innovative new service proposals is proving to be undeniable, with streamlined care decisions benefiting everyone. We are delighted with Serco Public, the progress we are making together, and are keen to explore further areas.
Iain MacBeath is assistant director, health and community services at Hertfordshire county council
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