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Cost-effectiveness of involving users still unclear, say MPs

Finance | Gemma Ware | 6 May 2008

The government should tread carefully in its drive to increase the amount of user involvement in public services as there is no clear evidence yet whether it offers better value for money, according to a committee of MPs.

But chief executives’ body acevo said the third sector has already proved the benefits of involving users in service provision, and one answer is to commission more services from them.

As part of its inquiry Public Services: Putting People First, a report published last week by the Public Administration Select Committee, said there was an absence of firm empirical evidence on the effectiveness of user-driven public services, or that outcomes would be improved for all or most service users.

The committee said while initial evidence suggested schemes such as personal budgets seemed “promising”, the report said it was “still early days” and more monitoring and evaluation was needed of their impact.

Resistance from professionals

It also recognised that any shift to increase user involvement in public services would mean a major change in the role of service professionals, who it said “are likely to be wary about any perceived threats to their autonomy and expertise, and as a consequence might resist moves to give users a bigger role in public services”.

As part of its push to transform public services, the government has overseen a shift in emphasis from service providers to users, such as personal budgets, which it has committed to be made available to all people receiving adult social care by 2011.

While the committee praised the direction the government was taking, it said involving users was not always appropriate and that in cases where people don’t want to or aren’t able to influence the public services they receive, they “should not be penalised…for not wanting to engage”.

It also said the government needed to ensure a proper evaluation framework was in place to monitor and assess the performance of user-driven public services to make sure people get an adequate level of provision.

‘Give more to the third sector’

However, Ralph Michell, strategy policy advocate at acevo, said rather than focus on creating this enabling framework, the government should commission more from the third sector, which is already well ahead in involving users in public services.

“Government can expend a lot of energy to shift what it’s already got to a more user-driven framework, or it can commission from where it’s already happening. The challenge is to demonstrate that we’re already doing that,” he said.

“It’s always been a big plank of our argument that you shouldn’t be commissioning services so that the third sector can get more money, you should be doing it because the result is user-driven, highly personalised services that are better for the people who use them,” he said.

David Congdon, head of campaigns and policy at Mencap, said it was “disappointing” that the committee was being so cautious about the benefits of user-involvement and said he expected more evidence to emerge over the next couple of months once a report into the effect of the government’s In Control personalised budgets scheme was published.

But Congdon said even if cost-savings were proved, it was important that the appropriate funding be allocated to user-driven initiatives. “It’s crucial that the public sector put the right amount of money into the package of support that people might then buy,” he said.

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