The government has launched yet another probe into the £1.8bn Supporting People fund amid high-level wrangling between the ODPM and Department of Health over who should pay for care services in the programme.
The review, by Matrix Consultants, aims to uncover what services are not related to housing and therefore should not be paid for through Supporting People.

It will look at 3000 supported housing providers and 20 detailed scheme case studies.

Sources say the ODPM hopes the review will prove that the Department of Health – which funds social services departments – should be contributing much more than it presently does to Supporting People. This is because it benefits from many of the services provided through the mainly ODPM-funded programme.

One source said: "There could be a long hot summer in store as these two heavyweights slug it out to see who should foot the bill."

The Matrix research, which will be completed in May and will feed into chancellor Gordon Brown's July spending review, could combat any move by the Treasury to cut the current £1.8bn bill closer to its originally intended size of £750m.

Wendy Jarvis, ODPM manager for housing care and support, wrote on Monday to chief executives of supported housing providers and chairs of Supporting People commissioning bodies.

"The better our understanding of how Supporting People funds are being spent, the better our chances of achieving a good outcome in spending review 2004," she said in the letter.

The new review will examine what services for homeless people, the elderly and people with learning difficulties or mental health problems should be paid for by health or social services.

It will also look at any schemes that are not providing good value for money.

A previous review of Supporting People, published in February by consultant RSM Robson Rhodes, investigated why the cost of the scheme ballooned by £400m to £1.8bn between February and October 2003 (HT 20 February, page 19).

Source

Housing Today