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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