Insight Management Solutions

Place Your Final Bids Please!

"Going Once...Twice...SOLD!"

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.

Perhaps heart is the key word here.  Anyone who’s heart is in the right place would not, for a moment, think that this is the way we should provide care for older and vulnerable people.