Market Position Statement introduction

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Foreword

I am delighted to present the updated Wandsworth Borough Council Adult Social Care Market Position Statement (MPS) for 2024/25. This edition has been refreshed, and again co-produced with our valued providers to focus on our key ambitions as Collaborative Commissioners. Our focus is on developing deeper and more strategic partnerships and relationships with our providers to progress solutions together for service design and innovation to meet our resident’s adult social care needs. Our co-designed commissioning intentions and strategies draw on the views of people with lived experience and the expertise of our providers.    

To shape the market for the future, we must shift as a partnership to us becoming system stewards and facilitators of creative design. We will create the conditions and environment for effective partnership where we can explore and innovate.  

We want to foster a diverse and sustainable care and support sector, where our providers are supported to deliver the highest quality of support and services possible, to meet residents needs and aspirations and maximise the social value we create and inward investment we bring to our borough.  

We collectively need to find ways of working together to support the increasing numbers of people seeking help from Adult Social Care and the increase we see in Safeguarding enquiries for example. Our residents have more complex needs as our population continues to age with co-existing conditions, an increase in the numbers of people living in poor housing circumstances and with poor mental health; the sector has significant workforce challenges with difficulties in recruiting and retention and I am delighted that 2024 has seen us come together as a partnership to form our Provider Workforce Working Group and we are now working towards delivering ‘10 tangible actions’ together. Working together on our collective budget pressures will mean we can plan longer term and build in sustainable models that focus on preventing, reducing and delaying the need for care as well as meeting our residents most complex needs. Doing this together through our Provider Forums co-chaired with our providers is another way for us to meet and explore this together.  

Since the last MPS there have been contextual changes at a national, sub-regional and Place level. Our Integrated Care Board will now go through further change and the abolition of NHS England. We must however harness the opportunities for us to progress our work further together in partnership and our recent ‘Roadmap to Integration’ sets out our Place and SWL priorities and plans to work together to improve health and care outcomes and deliver the next phase of the NHS 10 Year Plan. Joint investment and pooled funds and ability to collaborate on our local estate are all opportunities to explore together, including joint functions.

In response to the challenges facing the care sector for some time, the government in 2022/23 made funding available nationally to councils for market sustainability.  This funding has been maintained in Wandsworth since and we have been investing in your services where needed and possible. 2025/26 presents challenges in the cost of workforce as increases due in National Insurance and our borough commitment to paying care staff a minimum of London Living Wage all impact on the cost of the care. To date there is no additional Government funding allocated to Social Care to cover this pressure, other than the additional £600m, now £880m nationally, announced previously in the budget for adults and children. Collaborative design and long-term planning and partnerships must therefore support us in managing this together.  

Wandsworth Borough Council is collaborating across South West London and with its providers and drawing on analysis through ADASS and the LGA to support us in planning for 2025/26 fee rates. We want to work with you to understand how we mitigate impact and maintain and increase workforce capacity.  

This MPS, provides insight into the range of future commissioning intentions we have and how we can work in partnership in the coming year on some of the following:  

• Designing and implementing our mental health accommodation, support and care model through strategic partnership, inward investment and cross provider and sector collaboration
• Continuing to focus on reablement and integration of services to support health and care outcomes
• Recommissioning our Care Homes contract for up to 17 years with a strategic partner to deliver integrated care and facilities management services for 218 Richmond residents with care, dementia and nursing needs
• Co-designing our modern-day service offer with our VCS and people with lived experience for older adults, to transform the council owned centres to be integrated services with the wider network of community provision to support people as they progress through their care journey
• Further growing our co-production and opportunity for co-design with providers and people who draw on care and support
• Developing our respite provision for carers of those with a learning disability and increasing local supported living access
• Investing in and collaborating with our vibrant and talented VCS, maximising assets and fostering a strategic planning approach, enhancing our Community Independent Living Services approach
• Growing our collaboration across SWL, the NHS, supporting our hosted contracts for integrated sexual health services and stabilising our equipment provision
• Sharing our workforce developments and challenges together

Our key focus will continue to be the health and well-being of our residents, supporting them through a person-centred approach to exercise choice in their care and support and to live independently in their communities for as long as possible. We will continue to achieve this by working in a preventative, enabling manner and by adopting a strength-based approach to maximise community assets, delaying the need for long term intensive health and social care.

We will do this through our renewed commitment as Richmond & Wandsworth Better Service Partnership, where we form a shared public service team for Richmond and Wandsworth Councils. As the world faces a future of faster, more profound change, with all the possibilities, pressures and uncertainty that brings, our role as bedrock in the communites we serve will be more important than ever. We know we’ll need to be ready to deliver services amidst increasing complexity and disruption. And we need your support in this journey.

Finally, I would like to thank the many care providers the Council works with for ensuring that they offer the best possible care to our residents and our partners for their continuing passion to ensure that services offered are best suited to our community and hope you find this document informative.

Rachel Soni 
Director of Commissioning 
Adult Social Care and Public Health 

What is a Market Position Statement?

The Market Position Statement (MPS) summarises our commissioning intentions for Wandsworth. It provides an overview of the needs and anticipated future demands of residents with different presenting needs across various market sectors. The statement is aimed at providers of care and support and has been designed in conjunction with providers and partners. It will allow providers to understand potential business opportunities and support the development of services in line with local need.

This has been developed in response to our statutory duties to stimulate a diverse and sustainable market for care that offers people choice and high-quality services to support them to remain as independent as possible and enjoy a good quality of life within their local communities. The market position statement will form part of our approach to market shaping and development for care and support in Richmond and Wandsworth.

The MPS was initially refreshed in 2023, following extensive engagement with a range of providers across our market. We asked our providers and partners on what they thought would be helpful to be included in our MPS. These sessions also involved a discussion of the underlying data and demand projections that has informed our evidence base for the MPS. We also discussed the various market challenges and commissioning intentions for different market sectors, ensuring that these were relevant and helpful to our providers.

We have further refreshed our MPS for 2024, which contains updated data and commissioning intentions for our market.

We have seen continued challenges facing adult social care as highlighted by the CQC’s The state of health care and adult social care in England 2023 to 2024. In a climate of continuous change and uncertainty, we hope providers utilise this market position statement as a starting point to review current delivery models and ensure that they are sustainable and adaptable to meet the needs of our residents.

The MPS takes account of the market sustainability plan, which details how we plan to support market sustainability across the older people’s care home and 18 plus domiciliary care markets and move towards a fair cost of care over the next three years. It will be informed by the Wandsworth Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA), and Health and Care Plan 2022-24, which highlight local need and priorities to support planning of health and social care services, as well as key strategies and plans such as the Wandsworth Learning Disability Commissioning Strategy 2021-26. 

Who we are

In 2024 after consulting colleagues, members and stakeholders about our vision, organisational values and shared aspirations for the future, our shared workforce between Richmond and Wandsworth became known as the 'Richmond & Wandsworth Better Service Partnership'. Our purpose is to help our communities thrive in a changing world through connecting better across teams, directorates, and boroughs and continuing to think bigger for our residents, serving them as Richmond Council and Wandsworth Council.  

The MPS is fully online and is supported by a dashboard which enables more detailed analysis of demand across different services. We are keen to engage and listen to the market and hope the MPS provides a platform to do this.

Contact us

Your views are important to us in developing the MPS. If you have any feedback or queries, please email richmondandwandsworthmps@wandsworth.gov.uk.

We want to hear from providers about ways to innovate, develop partnership, increase co-production and hear the voice of people with lived experience. Please get in touch to share your ideas.

You can also join our Provider Forums, put forward agenda ideas, or join our Provider Workforce Forum – just get in touch.