Agenda item

(1)          The Chairman of the Select Committee welcomed Nigel (Nigel) and Andy (Andy) to the meeting and asked Members in attendance to introduce themselves.

 

(2)          Nigel, and Andy, had received questions and themes that the Select Committee were investigating in preparation for the meeting.  A copy of their response was included in the papers and considered by the Select Committee.

 

(3)          Nigel began by explaining the Youth Service Transformation Model. He advised that a meeting was held with Customer and Communities senior management team, approximately 4 years ago, to discuss how to evolve the delivery of Youth Services over the forthcoming years.  The discussions were not financially led, but how to be more effective, how to deliver a more appropriate service that meets the needs of young people, what is our relationship with the voluntary sector - especially with the number of grants which tended to have a lack of appropriate monitoring. The discussions and subsequent thinking evolved into a commissioning model, where KCC would keep a core number of services and commission private and voluntary sector organisations to compliment that core. It was clear that the commissioning model should be attractive to organisations of different sizes as the voluntary youth sector is a diverse market.

 

(4)          The outline of the proposed model was discussed extensively with the Cabinet Member and the Corporate Board.  The model included; having smaller directly delivered services (the same in each district with building, street and school based elements), community wide, from a range voluntary sector provision, which would compliment the model already operating and would increase the likelihood of smaller organisations bidding for contracts. .

 

(5)          Locality Boards were consulted on the process and all were signed up to the modelling.  [This process was taking place during the development of the Locality Boards]. The Leader of the County Council directed the sign up of the Locality Boards to this model.

 

(6)          Nigel explained that it took time to get “sign up” to the model by Members on the newly established Locality Boards, which were not set up in all areas of the county. Initially, Boards were consulted on the model, and subsequently were asked to contribute to the detailed provision in each area.  There were advantages and disadvantages to the process – it was extremely time consuming, but there was a lot of “buy in” from county and district members/officers.

 

(7)          The County Council approved the model and the holistic model was launched in January 2013. The successful 22 providers were local Kent based organisations with one exception) ranging from small to countywide voluntary organisations delivering lots across the county.

 

(8)          The voluntary and community sector were provided with ongoing support which included training in the commissioning process.

 

(9)          Andy explained that the Service were using a Dynamic Purchasing Model which allowed new providers to join during the contractual period of the framework. With traditional Frameworks, an organisation either got on or they did not at the start.  This model allowed flexibility allowing new providers the opportunity to join at anytime during the life of the Framework or reapply if they had previously been unsuccessful.

 

(10)       He explained that ‘mini competitions’ could be held to engage the market quickly.  This model:

 

Ø  reduced the amount of paperwork which was particularly beneficial to smaller organisations - a 30 day turnaround with a 10 page (not 80page) terms & conditions document as an example

Ø  led to organisations being paid up front rather than in arrears

Ø  led to the ability to lease out KCC buildings at a peppercorn rent

 

(11)       The issues were that:

 

1. KCC wanted to offer more training as organisations cannot currently access a broad range of  training as their staff and volunteers are not employed by KCC
2. With Quality at 40% of the overall score given to a bid and the remaining 60% divided equally between the ‘number of young people worked with’ and price, if the bidder got these two elements wrong they would not win the contract.

 

Question – Do you commission a Providerto grant fund certain organisations?

(12)     The Integrated Youth Services gave direct support to commissioned providers and the commissioning of ‘Young Kent’ to support the wider voluntary sector in Kent who provided grants to the Scout and Guides.

 

Question – How do we support the market – those who are good service providers but not good bid writers?

 

(13)   Andy gave an example of how contract management was used with one provider, which included a number of visits being made by the Integrated Youth Service Managers and Youth Workers when the service provided was not judged as good.

           

(14)   He advised that organisations that wrote good bids won the commission and learnt from the process and were more likely to win again. It was identified that support was needed for those that were good at youth work but poor at writing bids.

 

(15)    There were a number of organisations who reported their wish to move away from KCC funding as they saw that it was vulnerable given that recent large contracts had been bought in-house. 

 

Question - In some parts of the county the services worked well but there was chaos in others; were the contracts written before the model was designed?

 

(16)      Nigel said that he would not use the word “chaos” and explained that officers did not want to write this before the views of the young people etc were sought.  The contracts were not written before the model was confirmed in its entirety. He considered that innovation was key.  The process lead to looking at new ways to deliver the services and this was done through writing a specification around the outcomes.  He stated that he would have the same expectation of KCC staff, he would expect them to look at new ways of doing their jobs.  This was a way of challenging the market.

 

Question what about the issue of measuring the outcomes for young people are the interventions successful?

 

(17)    Members were advised that the specifications terms included eference to ‘accredited’ outcomes or ‘recorded’ outcomes. Both are regularly monitored and provide an effective way of judging providers’ performance and their work with young people alongside other measures such as attendances and number of individual young people worked with.

 

Question - how are the youngsters with the greatest need reached?

 

 

 (18)   Nigel explained that officers had tried to design the model by specifically engaging young people from the beginning. Delivery takes place in a range of settings, especially street, school and building (youth centre). Schools have been identified based on previous GCSE performance. Many of the youth centres are located in areas of known deprivation. Street-based work is targeted according to a number of measures including rural isolation and crime.

 

 (19)     During the process of setting up the model a wide range of young people were spoken to including members of the Kent Youth County Council, some of whom now represent young people who are at risk and needy young people. Officers also engaged with young people who used open access youth services who tended to be more needy than average.  Nigel felt a reasonable job had been carried out to meet what the young people wanted from the service.

 

Question – It is a shame that more schools had not took up the offer of having a Youth Worker working with their school. Will this be revisited?

 

(20)       Nigel explained the Direct Delivery Model of the Community Youth Tutors (CYT) who  were in approximately 20 Kent schools previously identified with KCC as “Club 25” where less than 25% of the cohort had achieved  five A to C grades in their GCSEs.  Members were reminded that some districts did not have many secondary schools, but in the new delivery model every district had at least one CYT.  This would form part of the Services Transition.  Each school had to buy in to the service.  KCC contributed 60% and the school contributed 40% of the funding which was spent in the locality, which helped to secure buy in.  This worked but there were problems when a school was in financial difficulty which has happen to 4 or 5 schools over last ten years.

 

(21)       There was no more 60% funding available from KCC and a minimal commitment of one CYT per district.  This service was not offered to Grammar schools.  Schools that converted to academy status continued with the service.             In response to a question, Nigel advised that there was no reason why there could not be a school based model to include grammar schools.  Members raised concerns regarding 60% KCC funding being received by academy schools and Nigel said this had been raised with previous chief officers and considered that this should be reviewed again as the number of academies grows.

 

Question regarding how KCC measuring the success of the contracts in terms of outputs - qualifications achieved rather than outcomes - opportunities for young people to ‘hang out’  and the negative impact that the new model had had on youth services in a village in the Tonbridge and Malling electoral division

 

(22)   Nigel advised that officers held quarterly meetings with each organisation to monitor performance against agreed outcomes/targets, this included a footfall measure.  The proximity and community safety measures were not part of the providers remit. 

 

(23)      Nigel identified that there were numerous examples and studies that showed a clear linkage to young people engaging in positive activity and community safety.  Nigel referred to Kent being diverse and stated that this model reached 25%-30% more young people when compared to the former model.  He acknowledged that some communities were less happy because of the impact the new model meant for them e.g. where a youth centre had closed.  Andy added that the Youth Workers made observations through visiting and talking to young people and the outcome of those visits were brought to the quarterly meeting with the provider.

 

Question: measuring outcomes are difficult unless ‘we’ are on the ground seeing it, so have we got the financing right? Can you provide budgets to Members to spend so we can help?

 

(24)    Nigel stated that if the Members’ grant were to receive a small amount of funding from the Youth Services budget to directly fund youth service projects in their electoral division this would mean funding being withdrawn from another Youth Service activity area, making it an unviable.  He recognised that Youth Services had been a benefactor of Member Grants and hoped Members would continue support through the Members’ grants to youth service organisation within their local communities.

 

(25)    Nigel spoke about the Kent Integrated Adolescent Support Services (KIASS).  He stated that he hoped the new model would sustain ‘open access’ youth work providing invaluable early help to young people and there was no wish to create services that only dealt with extremely vulnerable young people.  It was not clear yet how the model would operate in detail, including future commissioning models – this is work in progress; existing contracts would continue until the end of the contract i.e. March 2016.  Nigel advised that he did not know how much of the new KIASS model would involve commissioning services.

 

Question: What are you doing to make things easier for the sector i.e. Kent Business Portal, to support smaller ‘non business based’ but quality organisations?

 

(26)    Andy stated that KCC needed to work with / support small providers  so they could use the Dynamic Purchasing System

 

(27)   Nigel advised that they were still in a transition period. The use of the Dynamic Purchasing Model had been a quantum leap for the county council, previously used for the purchase of biros or contracting of transport – taxis.  The modelling opened up opportunities for smaller providers to apply and brought in “buy in” from KCC Members and the District Councils.  It was hoped that lessons could be learnt from work carried out in the process of developing this model, which included the attendance of hundreds of meetings (primarily due to Locality Boards but also with young people).  It was hoped that the process and cost involved achieved results and that the council can learn from both the positive and negative outcomes

 

Question: Local Member oversight is critically important through the Youth Advisory Groups, but how do you manage de-commissioning?

 

(28)    Nigel agreed that YAGs have a useful role to play in monitoring the local district ‘Youth Offer’; he advised that where there was commissioning but there must be the ability to decommission.  He gave the very recent example of a contract that was not working and agreement was reached with the provider to decommission.  There was no Member involvement in the process.

 

(29)      Nigel reaffirmed that the model was not financially lead.  He confirmed that in some parts of the county there was still a journey in trying to develop the model in an under developed market and where some voluntary groups need more support than others. 

 

(30)     Nigel referred to contract management saying that the contract could be reviewed at any time and gave the example of two services that were under contract management.  The contracts had been operating for one year which was a critical time in reviewing their performance and if they were not performing what should be done.  Young People were part of the process as trained inspectors including ‘mystery shoppers’.

 

(31)    Nigel stated that he considered that the service was in a better place than in the past. 

 

(32    Members of the Select Committee thanked Nigel and Andy for attending the meeting.