Footnotes
1. The data issues and the client groupings are set out in detail in paragraphs 1.9ff)
2. The 2001 figure is likely to be an under-estimate resulting from measurement issues (with too few housing support activities properly identified and costed). However, the post 2001 increase reflects a real increase in provision.
3. We would note the ODPM letter (dated 5 December 2005) to AAs outlining the 2006/07 allocation and the draft 07/08 allocation. The latter was generally a cut on the 06/07 level. The ODPM advised AAs against across the board cuts, and urged that savings be made from improved contract management and procurement processes
4. This is explored further in Section 2 - see the text relating to table 2.1
5. Outstanding interviews were undertaken by telephone
6. That is, problems for the analysis not problems for the support of the client.
7. It is also appreciated that for clients receiving integrated packages, the client definitions used by social work are also different, so this provides a further opportunity for difficulties to arise in the reporting: a single client/service may be classed under three different categories depending on the reporting framework.
8. The council itself maintains records of the clients. We understand that, to aid analysis from the published data, the council is now working to reduce the number of cases classified as "other".
9. Albeit, further restructuring is coming on stream over the period 2008 onwards
10. Sullivan, Eugene ( RSM Robson Rhodes LLP) Review of the Supporting People Programme: Independent Report, ODPM, Jan 2004
11. Relationship
12. Thus if a provider in local authority A, which was an "older people" case study area, had six different projects, four funded by SP and two funded by social work, we would ask about the four SP funded projects. However, if one of these services was for young people, not for older people, then we would exclude that service, and only collect details about the three older people SP funded services.
13. Costs for alarm services in England comprise solely staffing costs. Set-up costs may have been met by a specific grant (possibly DoH funding) or from general funds. Maintenance of the system is funded through a charge on rents, which may be met through Housing Benefit.
14. Wardens are non-resident; tenants are "intercommed" daily and visited once a week. Out-of-hours, weekend and public holiday cover is provided by the alarm service; holiday and sickness cover is provided by a "buddy" warden (i.e., the tenant is intercommed by their regular warden's office companion, but they won't get visited - this will last for no more than 2 weeks - longer term holidays and sickness will be covered by a replacement warden).
15. It was this type of project that brought the overall English average down, as the general floating support projects in the "average" authority (that is the authority where providers were seeking to cover costs) were typically around twice the cost of those in Scotland)
16. This applied to both LD and OP projects.
17. That is, the care budget had been cut by exactly the amount of the housing support budget when SP was introduced.
18. For these projects, it was in many cases possible to distinguish the housing support element of the package, and assign it to FTEs, in which case the housing support elements would appear as whole-time staff. In one other case, the housing support element was such a small element of the total staff's work we did not include it within the calculations, as it would have skewed the results.
19. NB - case study interviews for this super group were only carried out in Scotland
20. In 2004/05, for instance, more than half of all mental health clients in accommodation based services received more than 20 hours of support per week, compared to only 13% of those in floating support services.
21. NB - case study interviews for this super group were only carried out in Scotland
22. This ratio is likely to be influenced by those projects which provide their clients with floating support for a very short time - thus people remain on the books for only part of the year. Unlike with the older people's floating support, where staff often were dealing with very high number of clients at the same time (and may have been making weekly or fortnightly calls of 10-20 mins on all their clients), the implication here is not that staff working with the homeless super group would have a case load of 60+ at any one time. However, over the course of a year, a member of staff may have dealt with around 60 clients.
23. We are of course not suggesting here that the organisation does not have the skills or a specialism within it - simply that the organisation itself is not a single function organisation.
24. This was achieved as projects were honest about unused resources (clawbacks), as they were reassured that both over-runs could be funded (where these were reasonable) and clawed back resources would be used to fund new clients/services that they would be able to "bid" for.
25. 'On rota' time will include support staff working with clients: it will also include the preparation (if any) of depute/manager time that is spent working directly with clients
26. .A reduction might be achieved by scaling down the entire operation, where the cost is levied against a percentage of the total budget.
27. And there were examples of standard weeks excluding the "office week" as clients attended the day centre at the hospital during those hours…
28. This is more relevant to some client groups - for example people with mental health problems
29. We stress in all cases, as there are examples of this model working reasonably well.