Session 2: Prioritisation of principles
The purpose of this activity was to understand the differing views about what individual providers believe will have the most impact if achieved.
Providers were presented with four core pricing and funding related principles to prioritise based on what is most important to them for the future pricing approach, noting that all are important and required to be considered.
- Transparency: Providers understand residential care pricing - what they get paid, why they get paid that amount and how they get paid.
- Consistent Pricing: Residential care pricing is consistent across the provider landscape.
- Funding Consistency: Residential care funding is consistent between years and funding cycles.
- Client Flexibility: Residential care pricing/ funding supports disabled people and their families to choose where and how they receive care.
The majority of providers rated enabling Client Flexibility (10 providers) as the most important principle to move towards a more stable, predictable, and consistent DSS pricing approach.
This was closely followed by Funding Consistency (7 providers rated this as second most important and 6 providers rated it as most important). This reflected the desire of residential care providers to provide a service that meets the needs of the individual in care and have the consistent and sufficient funding to be able to do so.
Several providers felt that transparency is required to understand whether funding is consistent, meaning the two principles (Transparency and Funding Consistency) are interrelated.
Additional principles
Across these engagement sessions, several additional principles were identified by medium and small providers. A common principle was that they required sufficient funding to be sustainable and that they wanted the funding to be provided through reliable and flexible, needs-based assessment.
When added to the rankings above, the majority of participants reflected that these additional principles were ‘most important’.
- Sufficient funding: Having the necessary financial resources to cover all costs required to effectively and efficiently provide residential care.
- Needs Based: Residential care funding varies according to the individual requirements of each person to provide tailored support or services to the level required at that point in time.