Decision details

The report will outline proposals to recommission the provision the Council has in place to provide supported living services to people with mental illness who have no recourse to public funds, in accordance with the Council’s statutory duties.

That the Leader of the Council:

1.    Approves a procurement exercise to identify a preferred provider for a five-year contract in accordance with the required service specification to meet the statutory duties as outlined in this report;

2.    Delegates authority to the Head of Commissioning for Vulnerable People in consultation with the Director of Legal and Governance and the Director of Finance and Commercial Services to agree the terms of the contract, including any appropriate variations, to the new provider; and

3.    To the extent not already delegated to them by the Leader’s Scheme of Delegation, delegates authority to the Director of Strategy and Commissioning, in consultation with the Director of Legal Services and the Director of Finance and Commercial Services, to take any other decisions necessary in order to meet the aims and objectives of the report.

1.    These options have been recommended because they provide a personal service to those in need of support, housed in independent settings that support recovery. As a City of Sanctuary, Sheffield has offered a supported accommodation programme for several years, and this is the right kind of service to be providing.

2.    The proposed service is more cost-effective than alternative options.

1.    Alternative option 1: Do nothing. This would mean the current provision for this vulnerable group would cease to exist on 1 October 2021. This is not a viable option given the Council’s statutory duties.

2.    Alternative option 2: Cease to provide a specialist service but instead place service users in standard residential home accommodation for those with a mental health condition. This would be a more expensive option than the one proposed in this paper: using a ballpark figure of £700 per week per resident per standard mental health residential home, the annual cost for an asylum seeker without recourse to public funds would be £36,400. Due to s117 regulations, the Council would pay half of this, costing £18,200 per person. This would mean an annual cost of £345,800 to the Council. Therefore, the service model proposed in this paper is a cost-effective way of providing the support the Council is statutorily obliged to provide.