VOLUNTARY sector care providers have revealed their lack of faith in local authority processes for retendering services, claiming the needs of vulnerable people are not being considered.

A report from the leading sector body for care services, Community Care Providers Scotland (CCPS), has highlighted a massive amount of disruption caused by the retendering process, which voluntary organisations believe focuses more on cost than on quality of service.

The report indicates voluntary sector care providers are forced to bid against each other to provide public sector services, such as care homes for the elderly, and pressured to cut costs at the expense of improving conditions.

The report presents the findings of a survey conducted among CCPS members, which include Scotland’s biggest voluntary sector care providers such as Quarriers, Capability Scotland, Barnardo’s and the Church of Scotland care body CrossReach.

The report focuses on 14 separate re-tenders across 10 local authority areas and identifies 24 separate transactions in which over 360 individuals and 500 staff were transferred to a new provider following tendering exercises.

?According to CCPS, as far as the service providers were aware, none of the people supported by these services were consulted by the local authority before the decision to re-tender their support was taken, and in many cases, they were not made aware of it even when the tender exercise was underway.

In many instances, voluntary organisations reported that the commissioning authority did not even consider Care Commission inspection reports as part of the tender evaluation process.

Annie Gunner Logan, CCPS director, said: “This report shows that care service re-tendering is costly, disruptive, labour-intensive and a cause of very significant anxiety for people who use services, their families, and the staff who provide their support.

“It clearly shows there is real cause for concern about the impact of these procurement exercises: what is much less clear are the supposed benefits.

“Providers taking part in this survey say that in their experience of bidding in these exercises, quality of service takes a back seat and cost is the main driver.

“The report paints a worrying picture of voluntary organisations facing a choice of either bidding against one another in flawed processes designed chiefly to reduce costs, or to walk away from people they have been supporting, in some cases for fifteen years or more.”

The CCPS report findings were also backed by organisations working with learning disabled people, including Leonard Cheshire Scotland and Enable.

Ian Hood, of the Learning Disability Alliance Scotland, said a recent conference on competitive tendering had revealed real worries about the process.

Hood said that service users are kept in the dark about retendering, and that often their services are interrupted or changed when there is no benefit to them. He also said council’s are using the excuse of commercial secrecy to undermine the rights and status of people with learning disabilities.

“What they have done goes against the spirit of the law in terms of consultation and empowerment and making sure people are involved with the decisions that affect them,” said Hood.

“They were kept out of the loop so they wouldn’t get upset. It is an extremely patronising way of treating people with learning disabilities in the 21st century.”

Local authorities argue that they are obliged to seek best value as well as consider the quality of service.

Referring to a recent retendering process Harry Stevenson, executive director of social work resources South Lanarkshire Council, said: “In determining the final outcome, quality was the most important issue. However the local authority has a responsibility to look at the cost of service.

“All of the existing organisations raised issues about increasing costs of delivering service, but there was no consistency in approach between the organisations in terms of what amounted to additional costs. This was therefore an opportunity to address these issues from a provider’s perspective.”