Place Your Final Bids Please!
"Going Once...Twice...SOLD!"
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I came across a
news item some time ago. It showed that
a group of Local Authorities are using an online auction platform to find
organisations willing to provide care to older people. The way it works is that
the Local Authority draws up a Care Plan for Mr “X”. They put the plan online
and ask approved providers to “bid” to provide the care. In theory there is a weighting between
quality and cost, but in practice the work tends to be awarded to the lowest
bidder.
I have mentioned
my sense of indignation about this to quite a few people who work in Social
Care. Some share my sense of outrage, others do not! I have been told that this is “how things are
done” and that “it has to be done like this because of funding constraints”.
It seems to me
that we need two things to get Social Care heading in the right direction:
1/ A realistic
funding regime
and
2/ Practitioners
who are outraged when people are not put at the heart of service provision.