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Home Archive for category "Payment by Results" (Page 2)

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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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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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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What are social impact bonds? Or: Show me the money

Published on 24 October 2011 by in Payment by Results

When I first became involved in designing and developing large scale projects to tackle drug-related crime, I was surprised at the reticence of some local authorities and other statutory funders to get involved in payment by results schemes, particularly those funded by Social Impact Bonds. Councils were having to make cuts left, right and centre and here were reputable Third Sector organisations knocking on their door with innovative schemes to tackle entrenched social problems with private funding to boot. How could they say no? Over time, I have come to understand their concerns. This post explores the potential of SIBs. Social Impact Bonds are intended to be used to fund large scale interventions designed to tackle historically intractable social problems over a number of years. There is just one current UK example, the One project which provides a resettlement service to prisoners released from HMP Peterborough. However,

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Social Impact – ONE year on

Published on 1 December 2011 by in Payment by Results

Most voluntary sector projects publish an annual report. Not many are greeted with the level of interest which met yesterday’s publication of the first report  of the ONE project, the Peterborough Prison resettlement project which is funded by Britain’s first Social Impact Bond. The project is funded to the tune of £5 million raised from 17 private investors in the UK and USA. If it succeeds in cutting the re-offending rate of the 3,000 short term prisoners it is designed to help over a six year period, the investors will receive a return on their investment funded by the Ministry of Justice and the Big Lottery Fund. They need to cut re-offending rates by 7.5% to make a return. Critically, for the ONE project, re-offending is measured by a frequency measure – the combined number of reconviction events. The HMP Doncaster

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PbR – a healthy proposition?

Published on 6 October 2011 by in Payment by Results

Last week I posted apoll to try to gauge attitudes to payment by results by those sufficiently interested in the subject to read this Blog. For reasons that I go into in a comment on that post, the poll bombed. Most people either weren’t interested or were very wary about voicing an opinion, even in an anonymised format. I offered five possible answers to the poll question ‘What do you think of PbR?’: A great opportunity for my organisation and to make a real difference. I’m wary, I think it is mainly to do with privatisation by the back door. I like the focus on outcomes but I’m not convinced it will work in practice I worry about the impact on 3rd sector organisations. I’m undecided – let’s see what happens in the pilots. As you can see, at least three

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Measuring PbR outcomes – when worlds collide

Published on 14 September 2011 by in Payment by Results

Commissioning by outcomes is always right, public money should be focused on what we want to achieve – people in work, off drugs, no longer offending (as argued recently on this Blog). But measuring outcomes is difficult which is why, in the past, we have mainly settled for counting activity – the number of sessions delivered, action plans completed etc. instead. Measuring outcomes is particularly difficult in ‘payment by results’ schemes, where it is especially important to investors who carry the financial risk in Social Impact Bonds and other new ways of funding. Most PbR initiatives are large-scale programmes developing innovative approaches which are to be measured against ‘comparator cohorts’ in areas where the programme doesn’t exist. There is a great deal of protracted negotiation between government, providers and the financial middle men (such as Social Finance) to get a

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Why the drug treatment sector must get on board with PbR

Published on 14 October 2011 by in Payment by Results

‘Payment by results’ is an approach to funding public services which mirrors how we pay for a meal in a restaurant. We typically give a healthy tip if we like the food and service, but demand they take the cost off the bill if it’s not what we ordered, or the food is cold or defective in some other way. Organisations providing services under PbR will make a healthy premium if they reduce offending or drug use by more than the norm, but won’t get paid in full if they fail to reach their agreed outcomes. From a Government point of view, it’s hard to see the downside of PbR – it transfers risk, draws in private investment and ensures that public funding programmes actually achieve their objectives (or the money stays in the Treasury). I’m reliably informed that the

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Payment by Results: A limited tolerance for error

Published on 7 September 2011 by in Payment by Results

The 1972 Munich Olympics launched Olga Korbut on the world stage. Half of Britain fell in love with the diminutive gymnast with the gamine looks and the playful,  definitely anti-Soviet disposition. I too liked Olga, but I loved her compatriot, Ludmilla Tourisheva; with her regal countenance, she had an elegant approach which made you think she had just stepped off stage at the Bolshoi. Tourisheva won 9 Olympic medals in her career but my abiding memory of her is at the 1975 World Championships at Wembley. At the end of a typically graceful routine on the asymmetric bars, as she performed her dismount, the entire apparatus collapsed to the floor behind her. She spotted her landing perfectly, turned and left the stage without even a glance behind her. Payment by results has a Tourisheva-like focus on outcomes. A central plank

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First Commandment of PbR: Thou shall not pay twice

Published on 24 August 2011 by in Payment by Results

In the new PbR culture, just like in the Premier league, it’s results wot count. However, one of the difficulties that is starting to occupy the minds of commissioners is that, unlike in sport, even initiatives targeted at the most intractable social problems start with some points on the board. No commissioner wants to pay for outcomes that would have happened anyway. For example, the re-offending rates for short-term prisoners in particular are a huge social concern; the latest figures from the Ministry of Justice (for the first quarter of 2008) show that 61.1% of offenders serving prison sentences of less than 12 months are reconvicted within one year of release. Nonetheless, it’s pretty obvious that almost two out of five are not reconvicted. The MoJ does not want to pay those providing rehabilitation services for these successes and that

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Drug treatment, PbR and service user choice – it’s simple

Published on 21 September 2011 by in Offender/Drug user health, Payment by Results

There are a lot of criticisms that can be levied at the payment by results approach. Some commentators are opposed in principle, Laurence Demarco, the founder and director of Senscot (a network of Scottish social enterprises) was the latest to voice his concerns yesterday. Others are concerned about practical issues, many of them discussed in posts on this site – how do you agree bullet-proof outcomes, develop innovative approaches, and share out payments between multiple providers? However, there are definite strengths to the approach as well. What I like about PbR is that it challenges all of us who say “We know how to tackle social problems, just give us the resources”, to prove our case. Take, for example, the latest paper from the Recovery Partnership (an alliance between Recovery Group UK, the Substance Misuse Skills Consortium and DrugScope) which was discussed at

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Multiple outcomes: Any day you can get two for one is a good day…

Published on 25 August 2011 by in Payment by Results

In my late 20s I spent 18 months working in a residential project for young people about to leave care in Pittsburgh. It was a life changing experience for me, mainly because of my inspirational manager by the name of Irwin Banks. In addition to being a very gifted and committed specialist at working with troubled young people, he also had a flair for communication with a phrase or saying for every situation. One of his favourites was: ‘Any day you can get two for one is a good day’. Irwin didn’t use this phrase in a Tesco Clubcard context but in the course of his work. For example, I witnessed him on several occasions deal with violence in a way that resolved the conflict while at the same time enabling the perpetrator to learn a new way of managing their

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© Russell Webster 2011/12