Voluntary Sector care provides Best Value
Posted on Friday 11 September 2009
The Care Commission has provided figures to the Scottish Parliament's Local Government and Communities Committee meeting in June, showing that 89-92% of voluntary sector care at home services receive only high gradings (4s, 5s and 6s) whereas this is achieved by only 65-72% of services operated by local authorities and the private sector. Taking into account the likely unit costs of such services, this appears to indicate that voluntary sector care at home services may be the optimum Best Value option, insofar as their (generally) higher costs compared with the private sector are justifiable in terms of higher quality, whilst much more expensive local authority direct provision cannot make the same claim. CCPS now intends to do some work to identify the unit costs/hourly rates of services, factoring in their gradings, with the aim of testing out in more detail the hypothesis that there is a price-quality connection. The methodology for this work is now being worked out and members will be contact in due course with a request to take part.