The Planning and Commissioning Team (formerly called Supporting People Team) is responsible for administering the supporting people grant from central Government. The aim of the Supporting People grant is to fund financial assistance to a range of voluntary and statutory organisations that provide support to vulnerable people giving them the opportunity to improve their quality of life through greater independence.
It promotes housing-related support services which are cost effective and reliable, and which complement existing care services.
The role of the Planning and Commissioning Team
The overall team is responsible for the planning and commissioning of future housing related support services. The role of the team is to plan current and future services to identify the changing needs of vulnerable groups within the city and to commission future services that can best meet these needs within budgetary requirements.
The team is also responsible for the monitoring of existing services to ensure that they are of a high quality and that they are value for money.
All of the projects currently funded through the Supporting People grant are subject to regular reviews of their services. Performance and Service Development officers (PSDO) are allocated a number of different projects to review.
All projects are assessed against the Quality AssessmentFramework and are graded into category A, B or C. The Planning and Commissioning Team’s short term aim is for all funded projects to be working towards achieve a minimum grading of B.
Local Area Agreements
All Local Authorities entered in to a partnership with national Government which resulted in the creation of Local Area Agreements (LAA). The LAAs ensure that funding coming into the city reflects nationally and locally agreed priorities. These new arrangements will mean more streamlined funding by avoiding duplication. It will also ensure that funding can be directed towards locally identified needs.
As from April 2010 the Supporting People grant will become subject to the LAAs and will be placed into the one pot with a number of other funding streams. This will be called the Area Based Grant. Any recommendations that the Planning and Commissioning Team make about the planning and commissioning of future services will need to be agreed by the
Health and Wellbeing Partnership. More detailed information about emerging structures under these new arrangements will be posted at a later date.
