A new costing tool has been launched to ensure England’s 150,000 people with learning disabilities and autism can continue to live in supported living.
At least 150,000 people in England live in homes in local neighbourhoods with support also provided. Supported living is a middle ground between living alone without support and residential or domiciliary care. Until now there has been no independently verified way of establishing the cost of this support. Unlike the NHS, there is no recognised national fee for high quality, Care Quality Commission compliant supported living that offers value for money from public funds.
The Sustainable Supported Living Costing Tool addresses this gap by proposing national fee parameters which are unique to supported living.
Developed by the More Than A Provider collaborative
The Sustainable Supported Living Costing Tool has been developed by the More Than A Provider collaborative, made up of six not-for-profit provider organisations offering care and support for people with learning disabilities and autism of support for 13,000 people, worth over £650million each year. The group has worked with management consultant PPL to complete the research and calculations.
The rationale for the costing tool is explained in the Report: A `gloriously ordinary life’. Securing the sustainability of supported living for people with learning disabilities and autistic people.
- The tool is customisable to enable local authority and ICB commissioners to provider a shared, transparent benchmark for fees:
- Rates can be tailored to allow for local labour market conditions.
- It encourages a person-centred approach to commissioning which focusses on quality, experience, outcomes, and social value.
Read the Report and try the Costing Tool
What is supported living?
Supported living is a `home first’ approach which enables people to live a connected life in a place they can call home, build a level of independence and autonomy that makes sense, with flexible support. It moves care into familiar and connected neighbourhoods and away from large congregate and more restrictive and costlier settings, harnessing progressive technology to support independence. It supports the government’s policy shift to local placed and connected care. If this model of housing and support is not supported by a stable funding mechanism, there is a risk that people will have reduced choice and we will see a regression to an over-dependency on institutional models of care which do not deliver the best outcomes for people and cost the taxpayer substantially more.
'Every calculation is clear'
Helen England, one of the Chief Executives in the More than a Provider collaborative said:
The tool puts commissioners and providers on the same page, using a shared set of inputs. Every input is visible. Every calculation is clear. Commissioners can see how the fee changes if, for example, the National Living Wage or employer national insurance rises or if recruitment challenges in a local labour market require a higher starting rate. Commissioners can save agreed local templates so there is a consistent reference point for future reviews. Providers can use the same template to prepare proposals. Families can see the logic behind the final figure.
