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Archive for the ‘Payment by Results’ Category:


PbR Question Time

Published on 17 February 2012 by in Payment by Results

There has been growing media coverage of Payment by Results schemes since the New Year, both here and abroad (particularly the USA, Canada and Australia). I’ve updated the free to download PbR resource pack three times this week already. There has been a proliferation of schemes with many scheduled to start delivery in 2012. The PbR approach brings fundamental changes to the way Government Departments commission and pay for public services. This has led to speculation and discussion of a wide range of issues on this Blog and elsewhere, particularly around payment mechanisms and potential private-statutory-voluntary sector partnerships. However, blogging has one main drawback – most visitors are much more interested in reading posts than commenting on them with the majority of debates taking place offline. This blog is pretty typical. It’s had over 5,000 different visitors since its launch in September

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Paying for your drink

Published on 14 February 2012 by in Offender/Drug user health, Payment by Results

“Offenders with drink problems face US-style tagging“ “London’s Drunk Criminals Wear Tags That Track Sobriety“ “Sobriety bracelets’ to fight crime in London“ Just a selection of some of the newspaper headlines this weekend, typically accompanied by pictures of Lindsay Lohan, reporting the latest populist schemes to tackle alcohol-related crime – tagging offenders with “sobriety bracelets”. The bracelets monitor blood alcohol levels electronically and transmit results to a base station every 30 minutes. If offenders wearing the bracelet drink alcohol, they are liable for arrest. The stories themselves are confusing because they mix up details for two different schemes: one in London, one in Scotland; one aimed at repeat low level offenders and one at those convicted of more serious alcohol-related crime. Even a careful reading of Boris Johnson’s official press release fails to clarify the details of the London pilot. I

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Second Commandment of PbR: First do no harm

Published on 6 February 2012 by in Offender/Drug user health, Payment by Results

The interesting thing about PbR schemes is that they are supposed to be all about finding creative solutions to entrenched social problems which actually work. But when you look at most of the articles and opinion pieces, you find they are much more preoccupied with how to measure the results accurately and prevent provider organisations from gaming the system. That’s why the First Commandment of Payment by Results schemes is “thou shall not pay twice”. PbR schemes are carefully designed not to pay for outcomes that would have happened anyway. Sometimes this preoccupation goes too far and the concern about measuring outcomes accurately interferes with the operation of the project itself. To my mind the Kent Drug Recovery PbR pilot is a case in point. The pilot has been thoughtfully designed so that only one quarter of the provider’s income

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Shining a light on the potential of Payment by Results

Published on 18 January 2012 by in Payment by Results

It’s indicative of the high level of interest in payment by results that last night’s seminar at the Academy for Justice Commissioning attracted a full house who stayed till the end  despite a light breaking through the Ministry of Justice conference suite ceiling where it remained, dangling over the MC’s head, for the duration of the event. The presentation focused on the design, financing and operation of the ONE Service, the PbR scheme which seeks to reintegrate short term prisoners released from HMP Peterborough into the community without reoffending. The speakers were: Toby Eccles founder of @SocFinUk, who arranged the Social Impact Bond which finances the scheme. Rob Owen, Chief Executive of @StGilesTrust, who run the ONE service. Roger Hill and Liz Diamond from @Sodexo_UK who operate the prison. Despite most of the audience being very well versed in Social Impact Bonds and

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What’s the future for PbR?

Published on 10 January 2012 by in Payment by Results

What does the future hold for payment by results initiatives in 2012? PbR is fast becoming a key component of the Coalition Government project, generating increasing amounts of media coverage. The payments by results scheme to tackle “problem families”  received hundreds of column inches, although most clued-up commentators were quick to argue that the headline £200 million funding was not all new money. In terms of criminal justice PbR schemes, with which this blog is primarily concerned, they are now coming thick and fast. Everyone knows about the One Project run by @ST GilesTrust which is focused on resettling short-term prisoners released from HMP Peterborough. The project has been going for 15 months now and although there are no reoffending outcomes available yet, the first annual report struck an upbeat note. But there are plenty of others: HMP Doncaster (run

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A ticking bomb: how binary outcomes can derail PbR

Published on 19 December 2011 by in Payment by Results

“We only call him the Exploding Boy now, of course; retrospectively. For most of last year he was known only as Ticking Boy.” That is the first line from a new short story by @nickparker from a collection that got a rave review in Saturday’s Guardian. It made me think about the bomb ticking away ready to blow up the ever-growing range of payment by results schemes (details here) being developed by different government departments. That bomb is the method chosen for measuring outcomes which, for Ministry of Justice schemes, are always about reoffending. I wrote recently about my concerns that the MoJ seems to have decided that the outcome measure should be “binary” – a simple yes/no indicator of whether someone commits a further offence. The alternative approach is to measure “frequency” – a reduction in the number of re-offences. I

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Funding PbR Outcomes: it’s complicated

Published on 6 December 2011 by in Payment by Results

Some things in life are complicated. Take, for example, deciding the causes of the August riots. The government,  Metropolitan Police and the Guardian/LSE  are just three bodies who have published their analysis recently. Depending on who you listen to, the root cause of the disturbances was: Broken Britain, a lack of family values and feckless parenting OR Social media – particularly the Blackberry messaging service OR The antipathy between young people and the police OR The slow response by the police/government OR The recession and cuts in public services. The key, of course, is that there is some truth in all these explanations although we will never know exactly how they interacted to cause the events of the 6 – 10 August 2011; it’s just too complicated.   Some things in life need to be complicated. Measuring reducing reoffending outcomes

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Commissioning a better future

Published on 29 November 2011 by in Offender/Drug user health, Payment by Results

The last 20 years have seen an increased focus on the importance of modernising public services. It was a strong characteristic of the Blair years, and Coalition Government ministers in most departments are currently working hard to open up the statutory sector to private enterprise. One of the reasons that this government is promoting payment by results is that, in addition to the fact that PbR schemes transfer financial risk away from the Exchequer, politicians think that initiatives which are led and/or financed by the private sector will import “business acumen” into the delivery of public services. Given this focus on modernisation, it is a surprise that so many commissioners of public services continue to adopt such an outdated approach to procurement. This post focuses on commissioning practice in the drug treatment sphere and questions the effectiveness of the growing enthusiasm for re-tendering

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PbR: Teamwork in an era of collaboretition

Published on 21 November 2011 by in Payment by Results

Mark Cavendish is the fastest road cyclist in the world and to see the “Manx Missile” emerge from a pack of 180 riders at speeds of up to 50 mph to win a stage in the Tour de France is a thing of awe and beauty. Mark is a fantastic athlete with an incredible work ethic, but where he differs from someone like Usain Bolt is that his success is entirely dependent on a selfless team of eight other riders who ride to their limits to give Cavendish the chance to grab all the glory. On a typical six-hour Tour de France stage, his team members will go to the front of the pack about an hour before the finish and start cycling at a punishing tempo which prevents other teams from coming by. Riding at the front is exhausting

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Prison, Party Politics and PbR

Published on 1 November 2011 by in Payment by Results

Sometimes one person stands up against a revolution. Thirty years ago, on 23 February 1981, 200 armed officers of the Civil Guard burst into the Spanish parliament, intent on a coup. The defence minister, Manuel Gutierrez Mellado, immediately confronted the coup leader. Undaunted by pistol and machine gun fire which sent everyone else diving for cover, he remained on his feet, hands on hips, the epitome of machismo. Mellado resisted attempts by the coup leader to wrestle him to the ground and returned with dignity to his seat. The state TV cameras were running at the time and this historic moment was captured for posterity; in this clip you can see that Mellado’s bravery was not exaggerated in the telling. Eight years later, on 5 June 1989, a lone Chinese man stood in front of a column of moving tanks in

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© Russell Webster 2011/12