WM Skills Brokerage Model

An evaluation of West Midlands Social Care Skills Brokerage Programme

Brokering change

July 2009

About the evaluation

Policyworks Associates Ltd. were commissioned by Skills for Care West Midlands to carry out an evaluation of the West Midlands social care skills brokerage programme. The evaluation has three broad aims:

• to describe the programme, its origins, implementation and operation,

• to analyse the performance and impact of the programme to date, and

• to make recommendations to strengthen the programme going forward.

The evaluation is based on six distinct research components:

• a web-based survey of current and active skills brokers,

• a telephone survey of a sample of social care employers who have benefited from the brokerage programme,

• analysis of programme activity and management statistics,

• a series of semi-structured interviews with key actors involved with the design and delivery of the brokerage programme,

• observation of skills brokers through attendance at regular broker network meetings, and

• review of key documents associated with the skills brokerage programme

A full methodology is contained within Appendix One.

The evaluation and accompanying report should be of interest to all involved in workforce development in the social care sector as well as other other sectors where specialist skills brokers may have the potential to increase the uptake and impact of investment in training.

Acknowledgments

The evaluation team at Policyworks Associates Ltd. wish to thank a range of individuals and organisations whose kind co-operation has made this evaluation possible. Particular thanks are due to Jerry Conway from the Learning and Skills Council West Midlands, Robert Cirin and Kate Murphy from the Learning and Skills Council National Research Team, Helen Fortune and Fred Bentley from Business Link West Midlands and Ruth Beard, Stuart Baird and Chris Pearson from Skills for Care West Midlands. The contribution of the sixteen specialist skills brokers from sub-regional care partnerships across the West Midlands was both generous and vitally important to the evaluation, as was the contribution of the many social care employers who gave their time and shared their considered opinions of the brokerage service and its impact on their businesses.

Brokers and brokerage: a note on terminology

The term “brokerage” has an established meaning in the social care context which differs from its use within this report.

The commonly understood concept of brokerage within the social care field emerged first in North America in the 1970s to refer to intermediary support used by self-directed care consumers1 to assist them in identifying and procuring appropriate care services. The concept of care brokerage and the availability of appropriate brokers is seen within the independent living movement as being important to the personalisation of care services and the attainability of independent living2. As self-directed care becomes a more significant feature of the mixed economy of social care consumption within the UK the role of care brokers is likely to become more important3.

The use of the term “brokerage” in this report refers exclusively to service provided by skills brokers to social care employers as part of the Train to Gain skills development initiative.

Brokering Change 2An Evaluation of the West Midlands Social Care Skills Brokerage Programme

Contents

Executive summary 4

Recommendation 6

The case for brokerage 11The context: Social care and skills policy! 13

The West Midlands Social Care Skills Brokerage Programme 17Describing the programme! 19

Brokers and the brokerage role! 22

Programme performance 27Programme activity! 29

Broker and programme productivity! 31

Employer profile! 33

Programme impact! 35

Employer engagement and ongoing relationships! 38

Employer priorities and satisfaction! 41

Conclusions 49Training, skills and performance; future directions for social care skills brokerage! 50

Appendices 55Appendix One: Methodology! 56

Appendix Two: Recommendations Cost/Benefit Matrix! 57

Appendix Three: Endnotes! 58

3 Brokering Change An Evaluation of the West Midlands Social Care Skills Brokerage Programme

Exe

cuti

ve s

umm

ary About the programme

As the employer-led authority on the training and development needs of England’s adult social care workforce, Skills for Care works in partnership with employers and training providers to ensure that the nation’s social care workers have the skills to deliver improved care. As well as directly investing more than £25 million per annum in workforce training and development, Skills for Care has sought to attract more widely held resources into the social care sector. As part of this commitment, Skills for Care in the West Midlands has (uniquely amongst sector skills councils) designed and implemented a specialist “skills brokerage” model to support social care employers by assessing their organisations training needs and matching those needs against available training and development resources.

The West Midlands social care skills brokerage programme borrows and builds upon the design of the generic Train to Gain4 brokerage model. The programme uses a number of specially trained skills brokers, operating out of the seven sub-regional care partnerships which cover the West Midlands region. As with the generic Train to Gain brokerage model, skills brokers undertake Organisational Needs Assessments (ONAs) with employers which are then used to match training and development needs with appropriate training and development opportunities. Unlike the generic model, where brokers may not share the particular sectoral specialism of the employers they support, all of the brokers involved in the West Midlands programme have extensive professional experience in the social care field and retain a substantive post within their respective social care partnerships in addition to their responsibilities as a skills broker.

The programme is built on the theory that the specialist sectoral knowledge of the skills brokers will add value to the ONA process by allowing training and development needs and opportunities to be identified more effectively and intuitively than would be possible for a sectorally generic skills broker. The skills brokerage programme is also seen by Skills for Care West Midlands as an important component in widening and deepening the engagement between social care employers and sub-regional care partnerships across the West Midlands.

Impact of the programme

From its commencement in February 2008 to up to April 2009 5 the skills brokerage programme had delivered almost 500 organisational needs analyses to social care organisations across the West Midlands. During this period the programme brokers identified requirements for approximately 6,400 NVQ level qualifications and 19,300 other qualifications. On average brokers identified 12.7 indicative NVQ learners per supported organisation and 38.7 indicative learners for other qualifications6.

Our survey of employers revealed that;

• 45 per cent of employers involved in the skills brokerage programme had trained more staff than they would otherwise have done,

• 40 per cent of employers had trained staff who had not previously received training,

• 35 per cent of employers were able to provide better quality training than they would otherwise have been able to do,

• 35 per cent of employers had trained staff to a level which would not have been attained otherwise, and

• 85 per cent of employers told us that their investment in workforce development through the skills brokerage programme had resulted in and improved company culture.

Less easy to quantify, but of comparable importance, is the impact of the skills brokerage programme in securing the engagement of employers with the ongoing work of sub-regional care partnerships. Responses to the employer survey suggest that employers see brokerage as part of an ongoing relationship with their care partnership. Almost three quarters of employers told us that they would re-connect with their skills brokers in the future for support with workforce development. In comparison less than half of employers responding to national Train to Gain evaluation indicated that they would reconnect with their skills broker in the future.


Satisfaction with the brokerage service

Employer satisfaction with the programme brokerage service is extremely high. On every measure we tested, employer satisfaction with the West Midlands programme outstripped comparable satisfaction levels as assessed by the national evaluation of Train to Gain brokerage services. The table below shows comparative satisfaction with the West Midlands and National Train to Gain across a range of measures.

West Midlands social care skills brokerage programme

Train to Gain brokerage services national average

Relative performance of the West Midlands programme

Relative performance of the West Midlands programme

Percentage of employers satisfied that the skills broker understood their training needs 92% 73% 19% ▲

Percentage of employers satisfied that the skills broker understood their specific sectoral context 90% 79% 11% ▲

Percentage of employers satisfied that the skills broker gave impartial advice 89% 80% 9% ▲

Percentage of employers satisfied that the skills broker translated their needs into an action plan 88% 73% 15% ▲

Percentage of employers satisfied with range of training providers signposted by the skills broker 87% 72% 15% ▲

We uncovered evidence that the reputation of the programme brokerage service in some areas was such that it had driven new employers to specify that they wanted to work with a “Skills for Care” broker rather than a generic Train to Gain broker. One employer from a small residential care home commented that:

“[broker name] was the fourth broker who had approached us. The others had come from private training companies and we wanted to support a public project. We also knew the Skills for Care name and we’d attended some [sub-regional care partnership] events which had all been very good. And I think it was a good decision because [broker name] has been absolutely fabulous.”

Future opportunities and challenges

As well as proving an effective means effective for increasing the take up of training, the skills brokerage programme has also proved effective in strengthening the relationship between social care employers and sub-regional care partnerships. There are many elements of the programme in which Skills for Care and its partners can take great satisfaction and many lessons which other sectors and sector skills councils could valuably learn.

Looking to the future, Skills for Care and its partners will need to consider the next stage in the life of the programme and its capacity for development. Through the evaluation we have identified scope for a range of improvements to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the programme in its current form. We offer a range of recommendations to deliver these improvements. Beyond these marginal gains, a more fundamental set of questions exist about potential of the brokerage programme to impact not just on the take up of skills, but the impact of that net increase in the skills on the quality and performance of social care provision.

In the concluding chapter we challenge Skills for Care and its partners to consider ways in which the brokerage programme could be deve loped to s t rengthen the presently indeterminate link between p rov i de r- l e ve l i n ves tmen t i n wo rk f o rce deve l opmen t and i m p ro v e m e n t o r g a n i s a t i o n a l performance and quality of care. We outline a range of evidence-based recommendations which we believe may be helpful in supporting the West Midlands Social Care Skills Brokerage programme to achieve this step change.


Rec

om

men

dat

ions

Our recommendations are, rather unusually, split across two different sections of this report.

In this section we offer a range of recommendations to improve the performance and efficiency of the current skills brokerage programme. The theory underpinning these recommendations is simply to support brokers to work more efficiently to ensure that a greater proportion of their time can be spent on programme activities which add the greatest value.

A second and rather more bold set of recommendations can be found within the concluding section, from page 49 onwards. These recommendations identify some possibilities for more systemic enhancement to the brokerage programme. Taking the present brokerage engagement model as their starting point, these recommendation seek to look beyond simple supply-side skills intervention to suggest ways in which the present engagement model might be developed to support Skill for Care to deliver broader social care objectives within the region. In particular we suggest a range of ways in which the skills brokerage programme might be adapted to help social care employers utilise the skills of trained staff more effectively in order to forge a more convincing link between investment in training and improved care quality and outcomes.

We present our recommendations in tabular format. Appendix Two contains a cost/benefit matrix showing the relative cost/benefit of each of the recommendations.

Improving output and productivity

Skills for Care’s management of the first phase of the skills brokerage programme has been measured, appropriate and effective. The facilitative approach taken by Skills for Care has allowed the brokerage programme to become established and to develop organically; with each sub-regional care partnership shaping employer engagement and ONA delivery in a way which compliments pre-existing local arrangements. This local hybridsation of the brokerage model and the integration of skills brokerage into a wider gamut of care partnership support was identified by a number of employers

surveyed as being critical to their continuing engagement with the care partnership. On the basis of the evidence we have gathered we would suggest that such positive outcomes may not have been realised under a more directive programme management regime.

Whilst Skills for Care’s relatively “hands-off” approach to the management of the programme has been positive and provided a good base for development we cannot disregard the fact that the programme has underperformed relative to its contractual target in its first 18 months of operation. A key challenge for Skills for Care and for brokers and care partnerships in taking the brokerage programme to the next stage in its development will be to raise its output to the level required by the Business Link contract whilst maintaining the quality and flexibility of the service as experienced by employers.

Our analysis suggests that the productivity of individual brokers is key to the performance of the programme as a whole. At present broker productivity varies from 1.6 to 0.1 ONAs per week, with brokers completing an average of 0.7 ONAs per week. An important determinant of productivity (but not the sole determinant) appears to be the number of hours per week that each broker spends on brokerage related activities with productivity highest where individual brokers spend upwards of 15 hours on brokerage tasks. Care partnerships and Skills for Care may wish to consider the implication of this when placing staff in broker roles or allocating resources for the training of additional brokers. Closely related to productivity is the length of time it takes brokers to write up ONAs after meeting with employers and submit them to Business Link; with submission lag times ranging from seven to twenty-seven days. Analysis of the data shows a strong inverse correlation between broker productivity and completion to submission lag time; indicating that more productive brokers submit their ONAs in a shorter time. Data also shows some evidence of a positive correlation between broker productivity and employer satisfaction with their brokerage experience.

We offer a number of recommendations to strengthen the output and productivity of the programme:


1 Skills for Care should clarify and communicate to care partnerships and brokers its expectations with regard to the productivity of individual brokers and particularly with regard to the lag time between completing ONA visits with employers and submitting to Business Link. A target of one ONA per broker per week and completion to submission lag time of not more than ten days seems reasonable standard to set at this stage.

2 Skills for Care should define and monitor a small number of key performance metrics for the brokerage programme, working with Business Link to ensure that monitoring data is available for periodic (quarterly) analysis. Broker productivity should be one of these key performance metrics.

3 Skills for Care should work with Business Link to improve performance reporting to care partnerships. A simple template-based periodic reporting sent confidentially to each care partnership illustrating key performance metrics for that care partnership and for the programme as a whole is likely to be an effective spur to improvement of programme output and productivity.

4 Skills for Care should seek undertakings from care partnerships that new candidates for skills brokerage roles will be able to commit to an average of at least 15 hours brokerage activity per week.

5 Skills for Care should seek undertakings from care partnerships with regard to the provision of basic administrative support for brokers to ensure that brokers are freed to spend their brokerage time in the most valuable way.

Improving data collection and securing more value from programme data

Through the organisational needs analysis process, the skills brokerage programme gathers a large volume of strategically valuable intelligence on the state of private, voluntary and independent providers within the social care sector in the West Midlands. A number of small, specific investments in the way that this data is gathered and processed could deliver real benefits for strategic workforce planning and market development both locally and regionally.

At present the way in which the data is collected and managed makes analysis time consuming and costly7. Although we understand that improvements to the current

system of data capture and management are planned, we offer a number of low-cost fixes to ensure that better use can be made of this valuable data in the medium-term:

6 Skills for Care should work with brokers to ensure that employer data collected through the ONA process (and specifically typologies used within that data) are consistent with other larger social care data sets, in particular the National Minimum Data Set for Social Care (NMDS-SC) to aid comparison between ONA data and NMDS-SC data.

7 Skills for Care should work with brokers to develop a short (single page) data collection pro-forma to be use alongside ONAs and (where appropriate) non-ONA employer visits. The pro-forma should record, as a minimum, the employers NMDS-SC reference number together with details on the fundable training requirement, the unfunded training required. This data will assist Skills for Care in understanding the nature of unmet training need across the region.

8 Skills for Care should work with care partnerships to ensure that effective systems are in place for ongoing monitoring of employer satisfaction with the brokerage service, with the objective of harmonising methods and content of satisfaction monitoring systems across the sub-regional care partnerships. Opportunities exist for Skills for Care to implement a rolling programme of telephone-based satisfaction and quality monitoring.

Engagement with social care organisations large and small

The quality of engagement achieved between social care employers and sub regional care partnerships through the skills brokerage programme stands out as one of the real strengths of the programme. For many employers the question of who made the first contacted with whom - broker or employer - was a fairly moot point. In practice we found that majority of employers were aware of the activities of their respective care partnership and the nature of the service on offer from the skills broker(s) well in advance of any approach to, or from the broker. This meant when the first formal contact with the broker did occur it was neither exploratory (if made by the employer) nor was it unexpected or unwelcome (if made by the broker).

Whilst this effective pre-selling of the brokerage programme by care partnerships and brokers has likely improved take up of the brokerage service, it does raise some


questions around the extent to which the benefits of the brokerage programme have been enjoyed disproportionately by social care employers who were already relatively closely engaged with the work of the care partnership. Certainly, when we examine the size of employers who benefited from the brokerage programme we find that these employers had an average headcount of 37 employees in comparison to regional average of 28 8. If we take the number of employees as a proxy for organisational capacity, we can hypothesise that, to date, the brokerage programme has engaged with employers who have greater than average capacity.

Having demonstrated that the brokerage model works in practice, a challenge for Skills for Care, for care partnerships and for brokers for the next stage in the development of the programme will be to use skills brokerage as a means of reaching out beyond those social care employers who are already effectively engaged with care partnerships. Smaller employers are likely to have less capacity to train staff than larger employers and therefore have relatively greater need for support from the brokerage programme and the other supports on offer from sub-regional care partnerships.

Data gathered during the evaluation also suggested that relatively larger (and relatively more capable) social care employers who had engaged with the programme were somewhat less satisfied than smaller employers with the service they had recieved. We found that the training needs of these larger employers had generally moved beyond compliance with regulatory requirements, and were more concerned with using training to address specific business challenges. This suggests that the skills and knowledge of brokers is currently geared to meeting the needs of employers with basic, compliance orientated training needs rather than larger employers with more complex training needs. Addressing this issue is not straightforward. The expansion and nature of social care suggests that the sector will continue to be dominated by a preponderance of smaller organisations, and the evidence we have from this evaluation suggest that the brokerage programme is very well geared to supporting such organisations. At the same time, however, the growing demand for social care and the need to deliver social care services efficiently suggests that there will be some consolidation amongst mid-sized social care organisations. Meeting the needs of these larger organisations will be a challenge that is likely to become more pressing in future years.

9 Skills for Care should encourage care partnerships to develop clear employer engagement strategies; outlining the way in which employers are to be targeted in order to provide the maximum public benefit. Strategies should include specific provisions for the engagement of small employers (i.e. those below the 28 employee average), engagement of micro-employers (i.e. those with between 5 and 10 employees) and the engagement of larger employers (i.e. those with more than 60 employees and/or employees across multiple sites).

10 Skills for Care should work with care partnerships to consider how best the brokerage programme should engage with and support the needs of social care employers operating across different care partnership boundaries.

11 Skills for Care should work with care partnerships to consider how best the brokerage programme should support the needs of social care employers with non-standard, or post-compliance training or workforce development needs. Opportunities to consider may include the creation of specialist brokers post(s) working full-time on a regional basis (rather than the current part-time, generalist broker model) or the involvement of brokers from the wider Business Link network with specific business development expertise rather than specific social care expertise.

We consider this definition to exclude Direct Payments employers. Specific recommendations to meet the training and development needs of the employees of Direct Payment employers are set out in POLICYWORKS ASSOCIATES LTD. (2009). I’m safe because they’ve been trained correctly: Exploring the attitudes of direct payment employes in the West Midlands towards the training and development of Personal Assistants. Birmingham: Skills for Care West Midlands with the Learning and Skills Council.

Supporting broker research and knowledge sharing activities

Carrying out regular professional research is an extremely important part of the skills broker’s role. The brokers involved with the West Midlands programme are conscientious researchers, and are also keen and active in sharing their knowledge with their broker colleagues. On average brokers report spending two hours per week of their brokerage time (over 15 per cent of the average weekly brokerage commitment) engaged in research and knowledge sharing activities. Anecdotal evidence from brokers suggests that they are likely spend at least as long again carrying out professional research in their own personal time.


When asked which elements of their brokerage role were either increasing or decreasing in importance, 85 per cent of brokers reported that the proportion of the time they were spending on research and knowledge sharing activities was increasing (and the remaining 15 per cent of brokers said it was neither increasing nor decreasing). In many respects this a positive outcome as it indicates that the knowledge of brokers and the knowledge utilisation of the brokerage service is on the increase. However time spent carrying out research and knowledge sharing is time which cannot be spent interfacing with social care employers.

Opportunities exist - through training and professional development - to support brokers to become more effective researchers. But opportunities also exist to support brokers to manage and share their knowledge more effectively. We have observed instances of duplication in research effort; with multiple brokers searching for essentially the same piece of information. We have also observed potential for “junk mail” effects as a result of the way that knowledge resources are currently shared via circular emails.

We believe there is scope to use a web-based “wiki” engine to add considerable value to broker research by managing broker-to-broker and programme-to-broker knowledge sharing activities. This would be an extremely innovative solution allowing members of the broker network (and anyone else whom the network members wished to invite) to share, discuss, edit and organise knowledge resources in simplified Wikipedia-style online environment. Whilst Wiki- and forum-based collaboration can often be difficult to encourage and sustain, we believe that the maturity of the existing brokers network will mean that the Wiki will simply represent an enabling extension of processes and operations which already exist.

12 Skills for Care should identify opportunities to provide research training for skills brokers. Training to carry out efficient web-based searches of professional literature and broker resources would be particularly valuable.

13 Skills for Care should develop a simple, secure Wiki- website to allow specialist skills brokers to post, discuss, edit and organise knowledge resources. Skills for Care should use the Wiki to disseminate information and resources to the broker network and should aim for the Wiki to become the first port of call for brokers with research queries.

Moderating risks to the programme

The West Midlands social care skills brokerage programme is a model of effective network service delivery. Its existence and effectiveness is rooted in the co-operation of a range of organisations whose loose common interests are well served by their collaboration in the task of upskilling the social care workforce in the West Midlands. Like many network enterprises, however, it is the very collaborative nature of the brokerage programme which presents the most serious risks to its continuity.

At present Skills for Care bears much of the contractual and reputational liability for the performance of the programme, and yet holds relatively few levers to shape the that performance. During the evaluation a number of instances came to light of brokers being re-called from their care partnership or redeployed to other duties by their local authority employers. Despite the direct and potentially detrimental impact upon the programme Skills for Care found itself powerless to influence these decisions. To manage and mitigate such risks Skills for Care needs to strengthen its relationships with social care commissioners and other influencers and decision-makers in local authorities and NHS organisations across the region. Skills for Care should aim to ensure that the contribution of skills brokerage is understood more widely and that the programme can call upon a larger coalition of support.

14 Skills for Care should, as part of its internal management processes, identify and regularly assess the risks faced by the skills brokerage programme.

15 Skills for Care should map and prioritise the key decision-makers and influencers shaping the social care agenda and the work of each sub-regional care partnerships across the West Midlands. Skills for Care should then develop an engagement strategy to ensure it has effective access to the most important individuals.


5. The case for brokerage

The case for brokerage

Section one:

The


1. The context: Social care and skills policy

As the demographic ageing of the UK population drives demand for social care to unprecedented levels over the coming decades, the care workforce will need to grow significantly to keep pace9. In the West Midlands this growth will see social care become the largest source of employment growth in the regional economy; adding over 50,000 jobs by 201410. Rising to this numerical challenge and, at the same time, driving up standards of care quality and satisfying the needs of increasingly expectant care consumers will require significant investment in workforce and development.

The scale of social care challenge will be compounded by the changing shape of the economy of care provision. Between 2006-07 and 2007-08 the social care workforce in England grew by 8 per cent but in the same period social care roles in local authorities - traditionally the largest employer within the sector - fell by 3 per cent11. The general trend we can observe is one of shrinking direct provision from public agencies and increasing provision through a larger number of smaller providers in the private, voluntary, independent sectors. Supporting and developing employers and workers in this increasingly mixed economy calls for effective and sustainable engagement and support mechanisms for employers and their workers.

Train to Gain: A new direction in skills policy

For the past three decades skills policy in the UK has focused almost exclusively on increasing the supply of qualified workers through the promotion of education and training. The argument put forward by policy-makers throughout this period has been a straightforward one. The persistent ‘skills gap’ between UK workers and those in other countries is, it has been argued, the corollary to the equally persistent gap in competitiveness between the UK and its international competitors; so by resolving the supply-side skills deficit you also resolve the national competitiveness deficit12.

The results of these supply-side interventions could, at best, be characterised as mixed. The skills level of the UK workforce has risen over the period; with significant increases in the percentage of working age adults qualified to level 4 or above (figure 1.1, right) and significant reductions in the percentage of the working age population with no qualifications (figure 1.2, right)13.

The eagerly anticipated gains to competitiveness have been not, however, been realised14; with no sustained change observed in the relative competitiveness of the UK over the period15. At the same time, three decades of centrally-driven policy has resulted in two wholly unwelcome effects. First, the proliferation of skills-focused agencies and initiatives has resulted in a complex but well-intentioned ‘landscape’ of support which is, in practice, too confusing for the average employer to navigate let alone influence. Second, the unrelenting emphasis on training workers with very little steer from employers has resulted in large numbers of employees (over half in a recent nationwide survey16) reporting that the skills they possessed were significantly higher than those required to do their current job. This consequence carries with it the incumbent risk that employees become frustrated, not so much with their current job or employer but with their apparently wasted investment in skills and development, and so become less likely to take up training again.

Launched in 2006, Train to Gain is the governments flagship programme for workplace-based training. The emphasis of Train to Gain is markedly different from

Figure 1.1 Change in the percentage of working age adults qualified to level four or above, 1994-2005

1994

2005

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30%

29%

21%

Percentage

Figure 1.2 Change in the percentage of working age adults with no qualifications, 1994-2005

1994

2005

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30%

13%

22%

Percentage


earlier generations of skills policies. Whereas past approaches had effectively written the employer out of the process, Train to Gain places the employer and their business at the centre. By using specially trained individuals working with employers as “skills brokers”, Train to Gain ensures that the developmental needs of the business are identified first, and that any investment in training for employees is guided by these needs. Where training is identified as an appropriate means of achieving a business objective, the Train to Gain broker will put together a training proposal for the employer, funded either fully or in part through the Train to Gain scheme.

Train to Gain performance in the West Midlands has been strong, and particularly so within the health and social care sector; where the the statutory requirement for workforce training17 has been a significant factor in driving demand for Train to Gain. Between April 2006 and January 2009 Train to Gain funded just under 132,000 training starts across the West Midlands region. Of this total, some 19,000 starts - over 14 per cent - were NVQ qualifications in Health and Social Care at levels two, three and four18. During this period the level two NVQ in Health and Social Care was the most common qualification undertaken through Train to Gain in the region. Figure 1.3, below, shows the breakdown of Train to Gain-funded qualifications in Health and Social Care from 2006 to 2009.

Figure 1.3 Breakdown, by level, of NVQ Health and Social Care starts funded by Train to Gain across the West Midlands, 2006-2009

1%

27%

72%

Level 2Level 3Level 4

What is brokerage?

Whether searching for employment, buying or selling produce, resolving a dispute or sourcing training, recourse to some form of broker is a universal human experience. In essence the act and processes of brokerage involves an intermediary facilitating a transaction between multiple actors who lack either sufficient knowledge of, sufficient access to, or sufficient trust in one another to complete the transaction efficiently19. Brokers, put simply, are a means to make sense of and succeed in a complex world. Given the important role that brokers and brokerage plays in so many transactions, it is not surprising to discover that almost every conceivable field of human study, from political science20 and anthropology21 to disaster management22, and innovation studies23 has examined the impact of brokerage within its domain.

The value of brokerage is effectively illustrated by the so-called ‘principal - agent problem’. In a principal - agent scenario a principal engages an agent to provide a service. The problem in the principal - agent relationship arrises from the fact that information between the two parties is either incomplete (so that there are unknowns on both sides) or asymmetrical (where one party has information which may be beneficial but remains undisclosed to the other).

A common example of the principal -agent problem in action is the job applicant who overstates their experience. The candidates deception constitutes an information asymmetry between the candidate (the agent) and their prospective employer (the principal); with the employer being led to believe that the candidate is more experienced than is actually the case. Aware that a potentially damaging information asymmetry such as this may hypothetically exist, the principal seeks to ameliorate the problem by approaching multiple agents and putting in place a selection process to weed out those who overstate their experience. The problem with this strategy is that the transaction costs incurred by the principal escalate proportionate to the number of potential agents approached. For the principal to approach one potential agent, as in figure 1.4 below, is simple and cheap but highly risky. For the principal to approach many potential agents, as in figure 1.5, may give greater assurance but also implies much higher costs.


The solution for the employer in the example, and for many other actors faced with such a problem, is to engage a broker to ‘make sense’ of the market for whatever good or service they require. The brokerage function, as shown in figure 1.6, exists

Figure 1.4 The principal/agent relationship with only one agent

Principal Agent

Figure 1.5 The principal/agent relationship with multiple agents

Agent

Principal

Agent

Agent

AgentAgent

AgentAgent

Agent

Agent

Agent

Agent

Agent

Agent

between the principal and the mass of potential agents ‘out there’ in the marketplace. Through their superior knowledge of the market, their ability to engage with the principal and understand the principal’s needs and to frame these needs in the context of their market knowledge the broker is able to identify an appropriate solution on behalf of the principal.

The primary benefits for the principal of using a broker are twofold. Firstly, having co-opted the superior knowledge of the broker, the search process is likely to lead the principal to identify a more appropriate selection of (or a selection of more appropriate) potential agents than if the principal had engaged with the market unaided. Secondly, engaging a broker, rather than engaging the whole market, means that the principal only has to bear one set of transactions costs (the cost of engaging with the broker) rather than the multiple exploratory transactions costs which an unaided engagement with the market would necessarily imply.

Translating this principal/agent metaphor to the Train to Gain programme we can see that the employer (and to some extent the employees they wish to train) are the principals, the brokerage function is provided by the Train to Gain skills broker and the agents are training providers.

Figure 1.6 The brokered principal/agent relationship

Agent

PrincipalBrokerage

Function

Agent

Agent

AgentAgent

AgentAgent

Agent

Agent

Agent

Agent

Agent

Agent


5. The West Midlands Social Care Skills Brokerage Programme

The West Midlands Skills Brokerage Programme

Section two:

6.


2. Describing the programme

The West Midlands social care skills brokerage programme is a unique and innovative initiative developed by Skills for Care West Midlands in partnership with Business Link West Midlands and the seven sub-regional social care partnerships that operate across the region.

The programme takes the generic Train to Gain brokerage support concept as its starting point, but unlike the generic Train to Gain model (which uses specialist brokers to support employers across different sectors) the West Midlands social care skills brokerage programme uses social care professionals as skills brokers and only supports employers within the social care sector. These specialist skills brokers undertake brokerage activities on a part-time basis; fitting brokerage activities around a substantive post within one of the sub-regional care partnerships. At the time of the evaluation the programme had seventeen active skills brokers operating across the region; sixteen of whom were based within sub-regional care partnerships and one of whom was based within the Skills for Care regional office. The distribution of brokers across the sub-regional care partnerships is shown in figure 2.1, right.

In much the same way as generic Train to Gain brokers operate, the programmes specialist skills brokers meet with social care employers within their sub-region to carry out detailed organisational needs analyses on the employer’s business and workforce. Identified needs are then matched, by Business Link West Midlands, against a wide range of training and development opportunities. Business Link then goes back to the employer with a training proposal based on the needs the broker has identified.

As well as supporting social care employers to access valuable training and development resources through the Train to Gain initiative, the sector-specific knowledge of the brokers lends, it is hoped, a level of credibility in the eyes of employers. This professional credibility allows brokers to perform a valuable outreach function; strengthening engagement between care partnerships and employers and facilitating important processes such as data collection for the National Minimum Data Set for Social Care (NMDS-SC).

Figure 2.1 Sub-regional care partnerships and specialist social care skills brokers within the West Midlands

Solihull Workforce in

Care Development

Association

Coventry and

Warwickshire

Partnership for Care

Black Country

Partnership for Care

Birmingham Care

Development Agency

Shropshire Care

Workforce

Development

Partnership

Staffordshire Social

Care Workforce

Development

Partnership

ACT Herefordshire

and Worcestershire

Skills for Care

West Midlands

Regional Team


The theory underpinning the design of the programme

The theory of change underpinning the programme is a fairly simple one; predicated on the notion that the inherently personal tacit knowledge24 possessed by social care professionals and amassed by them over the course of years is harder-gained and therefore more valuable than the readily transferable explicit knowledge involved in the training of skills brokers.

The social care sector, the programme theory argues, is complex such that tacit knowledge is needed to navigate it successfully and to enable more productive interaction with other participants (i.e. employers). Therefore, by training experienced and tacitly knowledgable social care professionals as skills brokers it is theorised that brokerage outcomes will be more effective than if brokerage was provided by experienced skills brokers who only possessed a rudimentary knowledge of the social care sector.

Four key relationships

The design and operation of the skills brokerage programme can be described effectively in terms of five key relationships;

• a contractual relationship between Business Link West Midlands and Skills for Care West Midlands,

• a programme management relationship between Skills for Care West Midlands and the seven sub-regional care partnerships to deliver the contract,

• an employer interface relationship between specialist skills brokers from each of the sub-regional care partnerships and social care employers within that sub-regional care partnership area, and

• a training proposal development relationship between skills brokers and Business Link Skills Relationship Managers, and then between the Skills Relationship Manager and the social care employer

Figure 2.2, below, illustrates these relationships.

The contractual relationship

The contractual relationship exists between Business Link West Midlands and Skills for Care West Midlands.

Business Link West Midlands25 holds the contract to deliver Train to Gain within the West Midlands on behalf of Advantage West Midlands, the regional development agency26. As a sub-contractor to Business Link, Skills for Care West Midlands undertakes to deliver an agreed number of units of Organisational Needs Analysis (ONAs) with social care employers within the region. The original agreement between between the two parties committed Skills for Care to deliver 100 ONAs by the end of March 2008 by way of a pilot. Building on the pilot phase a second contract was entered into to deliver 800 ONAs to the end of March 2009. A third contract, committing Skills for Care to deliver a further 500 ONA units by the end of March 2010 commenced in April 2009.

Figure 2.2 Key relationships at work in the Skills Brokerage Programme

Training Proposal

Development

Relationship

Sub-Regional Care

Partnerships

Skills for Care

West Midlands

Social Care

Employers

Contractual

Relationship

Business Link

West Midlands

1

4

Programme

Management

Relationship

2

Employer

Interface

Relationship

3


Skills for Care West Midlands receives remuneration from Business Link on the basis of each completed ONA. Ninety-one percent of this income is paid on to the respective sub-regional care partnership whilst the residual nine per cent is retained by Skills for Care as a contribution towards the management of the brokerage programme, including the provision of the mandatory NVQ level 4 training required by skills brokers.

The programme management relationship

The effective management of the skills brokerage programme is governed by programme management relationship between Skills for Care West Midlands and the seven sub-regional care partnerships and their respective skills brokers.

To manage the programme Skills for Care uses a project manager working on a part time basis and a more junior project co-ordinator working on a full time basis. The project manager oversees the contractual relationship with Business Link and some of the higher-level negotiations with care partnerships whilst the project co-ordinator oversee the day to day management of communications with care partnerships and with the broker network.

Skills for Care have taken an informal, facilitative approach to the management of the skills brokerage programme. Having negotiated ONA delivery targets with each sub-regional care partnership and provided training for skills brokers, Skills for Care has left much of the detail of planning and delivery to care partnerships and brokers themselves. This non-prescriptive approach is intended to allow care partnerships to fit brokerage activity in to their wider programme of support for the social care sector in a way that makes sense within their own local and institutional context.

Skills for Care provides direct, ongoing support for skills brokers through a regular bi-monthly network meeting. These meetings are intended as an opportunity to share with brokers new developments and good practice in the field of social care and training and development. The bi-monthly meetings, chaired by the Skills for Care project manager, also presents an opportunity for brokers to network and share their own learning with their broker colleagues.

The employer interface relationship

The key determinant of effectiveness of the brokerage model and the effectiveness of the brokerage programme in practice is the quality of engagement between care partnerships, skills brokers and social care employers.

At its simplest the employer interface relationship implied by the skills brokerage model requires skills brokers to contact employers and successfully carry out an Organisational Needs Analysis, leading to the generation of a training proposal. In practice however the process of effectively developing the relationship between care partnerships, skills brokers and employers is seen to be a good deal more involved than this simple rendering suggests. Anecdotal evidence from brokers gathered in the course of the evaluation suggests that for many social care employers, and particularly smaller employers with relatively less capacity to develop (yet with relatively greater organisational development needs) there may be the need for significant relationship building and pre-investment before the organisation is ‘ready’ for the formal ONA process.

Examining the conception and quality of the relationship between employers and brokers will be a key element of the evaluation research.

The training proposal development relationship

Having carried out and written up the Organisational Needs Analysis with an employer, the skills broker then forwards the completed ONA pro-forma on to a Business Link West Midlands Skills Relationship Manager. Business Link process the ONA and cross reference the identified needs against their database of raining opportunities. Business Link then go back to the employer with a training proposal detailing the funded and unfunded training available to meet that employer’s needs as outlined within the ONA document. On the basis of the training proposal, employers then contact training providers to arrange for training to take place.


3. Brokers and the brokerage role

As the custodians of the employer interface relationship, the specialist skills brokers are critical to the viability and effectiveness of the West Midlands social care skills brokerage programme. To gather information on the brokers and their role we carried out a web-based survey of all active brokers.

Professional experience

As discussed, the design theory underpinning the skills brokerage programme places a premium upon the skills brokers’ tacit knowledge, and the relationship between this tacit knowledge and the effectiveness of the programme. To explore the knowledge and experience of brokers in some detail we asked a range of questions about their professional experience and qualifications.

Brokers reported an average of 12 years of professional experience working in the social care sector and an average of 25 years total work experience in total. This suggests that, on average, brokers have spent some 48 per cent of their total working lives within the social care sector.

Figure 2.3 Work experience of specialist skills brokers; years n=13

Total Years

Years in Social Care

0 9 18 27 36 45

41

44

12

25

2

5

Years of Experience

Minimum Reported Average Maximum Reported

The majority of brokers surveyed reported having worked with their current care partnership between two and eight years. The distribution of length of service is shown in figure 2.4, below. The relatively long service of brokers with their respective care partnerships (in most cases predating the skills brokerage programme) means that many brokers have pre-existing relationships with social care employers which, as we see later in the report, appears to have had a positive effect on the employer take up of brokerage services.

Further questioning to explore the range of professional experience revealed a range of interesting insights. As figure 2.5, below, illustrates brokers reported a very wide variety of experience across sectors and specialisms. We found evidence of particularly strong experience in the delivery of frontline services (especially in the area of education and training) and back-office support services across sectors and specialisms. We suspect that the high incidence of experience in support service roles is reflective of the age profile and gender profile of brokers. We also see evidence of a good balance between experience in the private and statutory sectors, although relatively less experience of work within third sector organisations

Areas of relative experiential weakness include delivery experience in the field of business consultancy. This relative weakness may become a more significant impediment as the skills brokerage programme develops over future years and the developmental needs of social care employers become more complex.

Figure 2.4 Length of service with current care partnership n=13

< 1 year

1-2 years

2-4 years

5-6 years

7-8 years

9-10 years

> 10 years

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%

0%

0%

8%

31%

31%

0%

31%


Given their long and varied work experience, it is not surprising to find that brokers are a well qualified cohort. Reported qualifications are skewed towards the higher end of the qualifications scale and over 70 per cent of brokers holding a qualification at level five or above. The very high percentage of reported level four qualifications is likely attributable to the fact that all brokers must hold a level four NVQ qualification in business support and advice27 in order to be licensed as skills brokers.

All brokers surveyed felt that their professional experience and qualifications had prepared them either ‘well’ or ‘very well’ for their work as a specialist skills broker. This result is very positive. Although we did not specifically explore the hypothetical question of what alternative professional experience or qualifications might have constituted a better preparation for brokerage work, anecdotal evidence gathered through conversations with brokers suggests that more experience in the area of business consultancy, and specifically diagnostic analysis of organisations and organisational problems would be valuable in the broker role.

Figure 2.5 Work experience of specialist skills brokers; occupations n=13

Adult social care

Children and young people's social care

Skills, education and training

Business consultancy

Statutory sector

Private sector

Third sector

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

1

0

2

2

0

2

0

16

0

8

0

4

7

12

41

42

38

53

31

49

23

16

8

8

9

19

14

27

8

17

15

18

15

7

19

16

33

30

18

31

21

19

Frontline delivery experience Frontline management experienceStrategic management experience Support service experienceVolunteer experience No experience

Figure 2.6 Reported qualifications of skills brokers n=13

Entry Level

Level One

Level Two

Level Three

Level Four

Level Five

Level Six

Level Seven

Level Eight

Professional qual.

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

8%

0%

15%

23%

31%

69%

23%

15%

8%

0%

Figure 2.7 Effectiveness of professional experience as a preparation for skills broker roles

n=13

54%46%

Very wellWellNeither well nor poorlyPoorlyVery poorly


Tenure and Salary

The majority of brokers were not employed directly by a sub-regional care partnership, but by a third-party organisation who then seconded them into the care partnership. This has fairly clear risk implications for the delivery of the skills brokerage programme, and indeed during the course of the evaluation a number of brokers were withdrawn from their work with the care partnership (and therefore from brokerage activities) at the behest of their employer.

Where the employer was not the care partnership we see (figure 2.9) that the employer in the majority of cases was a local authority and in a minority of cases an NHS organisation such as a primary care trust.

Figure 2.10, below, shows the breakdown of salaries of specialist skills brokers. Given the average broker salary of £27,000 per annum28 and the current total of seventeen brokers, a level of 42 per cent utilisation (figure 2.11, below) suggests that skills partnerships and broker employers are contributing somewhere in the region of £200k per annum to the skills brokerage programme in terms of staff contribution.

Figure 2.8 Employing organisation n=13

77%

23%

I am employed by the care partnershipI am employed by another organisation

Figure 2.9 Employing organisation, where not the care partnership n=10

20%

80%

A local authorityA non-statutoryorganisationAn NHS organisationA social enterpriseA private, for-profit companyI am a self-employed contractor

Figure 2.10 Reported annual salaries of specialist skills brokers n=12

£10 - £15k

£16 - £20k

£21 - £25k

£26 - £30k

£31 - £35k

£36 - £40k

£41 - £45k

0% 10% 20% 30%

0%

8%

23%

31%

8%

23%

0%


What do brokers do?

Broker respondents suggest that they spend, on average, 42 per cent of their working time on brokerage related activities with the remainder being spent on activities within their care partnership not explicitly related to brokerage.

To better understand the way in which brokers spend their time on brokerage related activities we asked brokers to identify the number of hours during the course of an ‘average’ week that they might expect to spend on a range of seven brokerage tasks. Our findings, shown in figure 2.12, are generally consistent with what we might optimistically expect; namely that brokers tend to spend a greater proportion of their time working on relatively more valuable activities such as completing and writing up ONAs and a smaller proportion of their time on relatively less valuable activities such as administrative tasks. As Skills for Care, care partnerships and brokers move forward with the brokerage programme, ensuring that the time spent by brokers on brokerage tasks is proportionate to the relative public value of those tasks should be an important principle to guide change and improvement.

Figure 2.11 Balance of brokerage and non-brokerage activities for skills brokers

n=13

42%

58%

Non-Brokerage ActivitiesBrokerage Activities

To explore the way in which the role of brokers is changing as the brokerage programme matures, we asked brokers how the time they spent on a range of seven brokerage-related tasks was changing.

Figure 2.12 Hours per week spent on a range of brokerage tasks n=13

Travelling to and from employer meetings

Meeting with employers

Completing ONAs with employers

Writing up ONAs for submission

General administrative tasks

Research and information-sharing

Other brokerage-related activities

0 2 4 6 8

2.0

4.0

4.0

5.0

8.0

8.0

8.0

1.5

2.0

2.2

3.2

3.8

2.0

3.3

0

1.0

1.0

1.0

1.0

0

1.0

Minimum Reported Average Maximum Reported


Through this analysis, illustrated in figure 2.13 below29, we discover a number of interesting things. For the majority of brokers the core business of brokerage - meeting with employers, completing ONAs and writing up ONAs - is on the increase, however for a small minority the opposite is true. More than half of brokers consider that the time they spend on administrative tasks is increasing. A very high proportion of brokers suggest that ‘other brokerage related activities’ are on the increase. This latter finding suggests that the nature of brokerage as understood by the programme management team (and defined in terms of the range of brokerage-related tasks outlined here) may be changing subtly but profoundly at the care partnership level. Further research with brokers to explore what exactly ‘other brokerage related activities’ consist of would be useful.

The only category of brokerage-related tasks in which respondents unanimously felt that either staying about the same or increasing (i.e. not decreasing) was the field of professional research and information sharing. In many respects this is a very positive finding; reflecting the commitment of brokers and their recognition that continuing professional development is critical to their effectiveness as brokers. We believe, based on our work with brokers and observations made during the evaluation, that there is the potential to make improvements and realise efficiencies in the way that brokers carry out professional research and information sharing.

Figure 2.13 Change in time commitment to a range of brokerage tasks n=13

Travelling to and from employers

Meeting with employers

Completing ONAs with employers

Writing up ONAs for submission

General administrative tasks

Research and information-sharing

Other brokerage-related activities

Your "day job"

-30% -15% 0% 15% 30% 45% 60% 75% 90%

-8

-8

0

-15

-15

-23

-15

-8

69%

77%

85%

54%

62%

62%

46%

46%

Increase Decrease


5. Programme performance

Programme performance

Section three:

6.


4. Programme activity

Between February 2008 and the end of March 2009 the Social Care Skills Brokerage programme delivered a total of 498 Organisational Needs Analyses (ONAs) to private, voluntary and independent social care providers in the West Midlands at an average of 35.6 ONAs per month30. Figure 3.1, below, shows the variation in monthly output of the programme over the period in question.

Figure 3.2, below, shows the distribution of ONA delivery by sub-regional care partnership area

Figure 3.1 ONA output of the Social Care Skills Brokerage programme, February 2008 - March 2008

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Feb-08 Apr-08 Jun-08 Aug-08 Oct-08 Dec-08 Feb-09

4

44

28

38

24

30

24

40

46

36

22

54

75

33

ON

A c

omp

letio

ns p

er m

onth

ONAs by Month Average number of ONA completions per month (35.6)

The variation31 in total ONA output between care partnerships suggests that there are a number of factors at work influencing output. A simple explanation might be the number of brokers operating out of each partnership where we might expect partnerships with more brokers to deliver more ONAs. We can disprove this hypothesis fairly conclusively by examining the rank correlation between the number of brokers in a given partnership and its output of ONAs. As figure 3.3, below, shows there is no effective correlation between the number of brokers and ONA output. This insight is extremely important as it suggests that growing the number of brokers is not likely, in itself, to be an effective means of growing the delivery capacity of the programme.

Figure 3.2 ONA output of the Social Care Skills Brokerage programme broken down by care partnership sub-regions February 2008 - March 2008

Shropshire

Staffordshire

Black Country

Coventry and Warwickshire

Birmingham

Herefordshire and Worcestershire

Solihull

0 20 40 60 80 100 120

3

61

64

76

91

99

104


Figure 3.3 Rank correlation between the number of brokers within a care partnership and its ONA output

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

R² = 0.1138

Num

ber

of B

roke

rs (R

ank)

Output (Rank)

Figure 3.4 Rank correlation between the proportion of broker time spent on brokerage activities and ONA output

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

0 2 4 6 8 10 12

R² = 0.4552

Hou

rs p

er w

eek

spen

t on

bro

kera

ge u

ctiv

ity (R

ank)

Output (Rank)

Exploring the data further, we find the only significant correlation occurs between the proportion of total working hours that brokers spend working on brokerage activities and their output (figure 3.4). The conclusion to draw from this is that the most productive brokerage model is likely to be one in which brokers are relatively more dedicated (in terms of time commitment) to brokerage activities and have fewer other responsibilities within the care partnership.

Further variations in partnership output and productivity are likely to be attributable to local hybridisation of the basic skills brokerage model (reflecting the differing priorities which different partnerships attach to brokerage) and the fact that different care partnerships are at different stages of maturity in terms of integrating brokerage into their wide programme of activity. Although we did not examine local hybridisation of the brokerage model in great detail it is possible, from data and from observations, to discern four broad hybrid models of brokerage:

• the developmental broker model, where the work of brokers developing but appears to not yet be well integrated with the rest of partnership activity

• the integrated broker model, where multiple brokers spend a moderate proportion of their time working on brokerage activities and where brokerage appears to be well integrated with the wider programme of care partnership activity

• the senior/junior broker model, where a more senior but less active broker operates as a manager to a junior broker working effectively full-time on brokerage activities.

• the champion broker model, where a small number of brokers are working effectively full-time on brokerage activities and setting the pace for the care partnership as a whole.

Whilst we do not advocate any “one-best-model” of brokerage support we do observe that integrated broker model generates good employer satisfaction whilst the senior/junior model yields high ONA output. The champion broker model gives both good output and good employer satisfaction but requires an high-level of partnership commitment and broker aptitude to achieve.


5. Broker and programme productivity

Using the programme activity data provided by Business Link West Midlands and data from the survey of brokers we have been able to construct a simple measure of broker and care partnership productivity32. Figure 3.5, below shows the productivity of each of the brokers involved in the programme expressed in terms of the average number of ONAs they have delivered for each week that that have been active as brokers. This measure allows for straightforward comparison between brokers (including brokers outside the Skills for Care programme) regardless of how long they have been active as brokers and allows for benchmarking of change in broker performance over time.

Figure 3.5 Broker productivity expressed as the average number of ONAs completions per week, February 2008 - March 2008

Broker K

Broker L

Broker O

Broker M

Broker J

Broker Q

Broker I

Broker G

Broker E

Broker N

Broker F

Broker H

Broker B

Broker A

Broker D

0 0.2 0.5 0.7 0.9 1.1 1.4 1.6 1.8

0.12

0.16

0.24

0.31

0.50

0.54

0.57

0.58

0.69

0.87

0.89

1.03

1.06

1.35

1.61

Figure 3.6, below, shows the productivity levels for each of the sub-regional care partnership areas expressed in terms of the average number of ONAs delivered per broker per week.

This fairly rudimentary analysis of broker and care partnership productivity reveals significant variations in the relative productivity of care partnership and brokers. This reinforces our assertion above (p.30) that there are likely to be a number of local hybridisations of the basic skills brokerage model. Whilst we are hesitant to suggest that one model is optimal, the output emphasis of the programme does suggests that models where brokers are more productive are generally considered to be perfoming better.

A similarly significant variation was found in the programme data in the lag times between completing an ONA visit with an employer and submitting the completed ONA proforma to Business Link for further processing. Here lag times varied between

Figure 3.6 Care partnership productivity in ONAs per broker per week, February 2008 - March 2008

Coventry and Warwickshire

Shropshire

Staffordshire

Herefordshire and Worcestershire

Black Country

Birmingham

Solihull

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4

0.12

0.46

0.52

0.86

0.88

1.06

1.35


seven and 37 days with an average time of 14 days. Results are illustrated in figure 3.7, below.

Investigating broker productivity and transmission lag data further we examined the correlation between the two variables by plotting them together (figure 3.8). We discovered, when removing extreme outliner data points, that the correlation generated an R-squared value of 0.80. This means that 80 per cent of the variation in one data set can be accounted by variation in the other and the negative correlation in the data indicated that as lag time increases, productivity decreases, and vice versa. The specific programme management insight to draw form this is that less productive

Figure 3.7 Individual broker lag between completing ONA visit with employer and transmission onto Business Link for processing

Broker K

Broker L

Broker O

Broker A

Broker H

Broker Q

Broker M

Broker I

Broker J

Broker E

Broker G

Broker N

Broker F

Broker D

Broker B

0 days 5 days 10 days 15 days 20 days 25 days 30 days 35 days 40 days

37 days

20 days

17 days

16 days

16 days

15 days

15 days

14 days

13 days

10 days

8 days

7 days

7 days

7 days

7 days

brokers take longer to get their completed ONA paperwork to Business Link and therefore by stipulating a transmission lag target time the productivity of the programme would more than likely be driven up. Where brokers experience persistent difficulty in meeting this lag time target there are likely to be significant and readily identifiable underlying causes such as too much time spent researching training solutions, inadequate time dedicated to brokerage, absence of administrative support.

Figure 3.8 Correlation between broker productivity and transmission lag time for currently active brokers

0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

0d 10d 20d 30d 40d

R² = 0.8062

Bro

ker

Pro

duc

tivity

(ON

As

per

wee

k)

Lag Time


6. Employer profile

Figure 3.9, below, shows the size of a sample33 of 70 employers who have benefited from the West Midlands Skills Brokerage programme. With almost 37 employees, the average size of employers involved with the programme is somewhat larger than the average headcount of 28 employees for all social care providers across the region.

Figure 3.9 Employee headcounts of employers engaged in the West Midlands Social Care Skills Brokerage Project, January 2008 - March 2008

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

Em

plo

yee

head

coun

t

Sampled Employers

Average size of employers engaged in the social care skills brokerage programmeAverage size of social care employers in the West Midlands

If we take the size of employee headcount as a proxy for organisational capacity (i.e. we assume that larger organisations are likely to be more capable) then we can suggest that the skills brokerage programme is tending to engage relatively more capable organisations. There are a number of plausible explanations for this;

• There may be an element of selection bias - introduced either implicitly or explicitly - on the part of care partnership and brokers when marketing the skills brokerage service leading brokers to contact organisations whom they perceive to be more capable and more able to engage effectively in the brokerage process.

• There may be a self-selection bias as a result of pre-existing engagement with sub-regional care partnerships wherein larger and more capable organisations are more likely to already be engaged with the care partnership and its networks.

• There may be a self-selection bias due to larger and more capable social care employers having a better appreciation of the benefit of training and workforce development on their business.

• There may be a negative selection bias (where smaller care providers actively avoid engagement with the brokerage programme) due to their relatively lower capacity and the associated real and/or perceived problems of releasing staff for training.

Whether to view this apparent selection bias positively or negatively is a rather moot point with arguments both for and against.

There is a strong utilitarian public value argument which suggests that engaging with larger and more capable employers will result in the greatest net improvement in the state of the sector and therefore the greatest net improvement in the state of social care within the region. The rejoinder to this argument is that a relatively more capable social care provider will develop their workforce and service as a result of market and regulatory drivers and so providing a publicly-funded skills brokerage service simply constitutes corporate welfare for these more capable employers.

There is some likelyhood, given the relative newness of the programme and the high-levels of pre-engagement between care partnerships and involved employers, that the programme has essentially been involved to date in harvesting the “low hanging fruit” of social care organisations who are positively predisposed to participating in a programme of this kind. The question of what types of employers the programme


should target in coming years will be an important for all of the partners involved in the design and deliver of the programme.

Skills brokerage and self-directed employers

In addition to supporting 498 conventional social care employers the skills brokerage programme also delivered a very small number of ONAs- less than five 34 - to individuals in receipt of a direct payment in their capacity as employers of personal assistants35.

With over 56,000 individuals in England currently in receipt of a direct payment, up from 5,500 in 200136, and Government hinting at significant expansions to the direct payments regime, direct payment mechanisms look set to becoming a defining feature of future social care in the UK37. For many people in receipt of a direct payment, meeting their social care needs will entail employing one or more personal assistants. The Commission for Social Care Inspection in its 2009 assessment of the state of care

sector, estimated that there are cu r ren t l y 152 ,000 PA ro les i n England38.

Whilst ‘conventional’ employers in the statutory, private and voluntary sectors will continue to be the primary focus for sub-regional care partnerships and for skills brokers, it is important that neither self-directed employers nor their employees are excluded from the benefits which the skills brokerage programme can deliver. Although it is tempting to consider simply broadening the scope of the current ski l ls brokerage programme to make more explicit mention of direct payments recipients and other self-directed employers, as a recent report exploring the att itudes of direct payment

employers in the West Midlands39 showed, this is unlikely to constitute either an efficient or an effective solution.

Instead of simply extending the current brokerage model to self-directed employers, the report posited a mediated brokerage model in which the skills broker develops a relationship not directly with the employer but with local support organisations who have pre-existing relationships with direct payment recipients. In the model, the local support organisations would undertake a training needs analysis with the self-directed employer (based on the ONA process but adapted to better reflect the needs of self-directed employers) and would then pass the needs assessment to the broker to identify training and development opportunities to meet the identified needs.

Skills for Care are currently piloting the mediated brokerage approach in Wolverhampton with the Black Country sub-regional care partnership, Wolverhampton City Council and Pendrels Trust.


7. Programme impact

Between February 2008 and March 2009 the Social Care Skills Brokerage programme delivered a total of 498 organisational needs analyses to social care organisations. Over this period the project’s specialist skills brokers identified an average of:

• 5.4 indicative learners at Level 2 per organisation




• 38.7 indicative learners for other qualifications

This suggests that the programme has identified requirements for some 6,400 NVQ level qualifications and 19,300 other qualifications across the 498 employers involved40

Training outcomes

Employers who had been involved with the Social Care Skills Brokerage programme were asked to comment on the staff training outcomes that had been achieved as a result of their participation in the programme. Figure 3.10, below, illustrates employers responses together with comparative data from the national evaluation of Train to Gain. In summary, we found that:

• Fourty-five per cent of employers reported that their involvement with the skills brokerage programme had led them to train more staff than they would otherwise have done,

• Fourty per cent of employers reported training staff who had not received any training before,

• Thirty-five per cent of employers reported that the skills brokerage programme had enabled them to provide better quality training, and

• Thirty-five per cent of employers said that their involvement in the brokerage programme had allowed them to train staff to a higher level than would otherwise have been possible.

Although the reported training outcomes are all positive it is notable (from comparison with the employer data gathered through the national evaluation on Train to Gain) that employers nationally report markedly higher levels of positive training outcomes. We suggest that this disparity can be attributed in the main to the relative maturity of they system of training standards, provision and take up in the social care sector. The statutorily mandated nature of much training within the social care sector means that, unlike sectors which are not comparably regulated, it is increasingly unusual to find social care employers who are not actively training or do not have plans in place to train their staff. Additional evidence from the national evaluation of Train to Gain and

Figure 3.10 Impact of participation in the skills brokerage programme expressed in terms of staff training outcomes

WM Sample n=55

Trained more staff

Trained staff who we had not been trained before

Trained staff in different occupational groups

Trained staff to a higher level

Provided better quality training

0% 20% 40% 60% 80%

65%

65%

34%

72%

67%

35%

35%

8%

40%

45%

West Midlands Evaluation Sample National Evaluation Sample


the evaluation of the West Midlands Social Care Skills Brokerage programme supports this hypothesis; demonstrating that whilst only 60 per cent of employers nationally have a training plan in place to guide the development of their staff, a reported 95 per cent of the employers who were involved West Midlands programme with the have such a plan in place.

Business outcomes

Employers who had been involved with the West Midlands Social Care Skills Brokerage programme were asked a range of questions concerning the impact that their involvement in the programme had had upon their businesses. Figure 3.11, below, illustrates employers responses together with comparative data from the national evaluation of Train to Gain. As the graph shows, the West Midlands programme either outperforms or equals national averages on eight of the eleven measures.

The four measures on which the West Midlands programme shows a relative underperformance against the national trend can be grouped into two categories; workforce outcomes and commercial outcomes.

The relatively poor performance against the workforce outcome measures (“improving staff retention” “attracting good staff” and “reducing absenteeism”) is, we suspect, in part due to the perceptions of employers and the absence of any robust firm-level evidence to counter this perception. It may also be due in part to employers failure to understand the so-called “psychological contract” between themselves and their employees 41. In particular, an appreciation on the part of employers of the ways in which investment in workforce development through mechanisms such as training can form an important part of the psychological contract and can strengthen employee commitment to the enterprise (so reducing absenteeism and improving retention). A simple process of employer awareness raising is likely to help improve programme performance against these measures. As part of this awareness raising, employers could also be supported to develop appropriate performance measures to enable them to monitor absenteeism and staff turnover42.

Weaker performance against the commercial outcome measures (“helping longer term competitiveness” and “providing new services”) cuts to the heart of the question around the relationship between investment in training and firm-level performance. The

reality, as we discuss in the conclusion to this report, is that there is no simple, linear relationship between investment in training and improved firm performance. Training workers is unlikely, by itself, to raise firm perfomance tangibly or sustainably. In order to achieve a performance dividend employers need support and guidance to ensure that they utilise the trained staff and to ensure that their new skills are put to work effectively.

Figure 3.11 Impact of participation in the skills brokerage programme expressed in terms of achieved business outcomes

WM Sample n=55

Improved company culture

Employees have gained job-related skills

Employees have gained qualifications

Employees have gained self-confidence

Enabled us to meet legal requirements

Helped our longer-term competitiveness

Had a beneficial impact on the “bottom line”

Helped improve staff retention

Helped us to attract good staff

Led to a reduction in absenteeism

We have been able to provide a new service

0% 23% 45% 68% 90%

25%

22%

39%

44%

42%

64%

67%

80%

52%

74%

83%

23%

23%

33%

38%

43%

58%

78%

80%

80%

83%

85%



Figure 3.12, below, shows the full range of employer responses to questions concerning the impact that their involvement in the programme had had upon their businesses.

Figure 3.12 Impact of participation in the skills brokerage programme expressed in terms of qualitative outcomes

n=55

Improved company culture

Employees have gained job-related skills

Employees have gained qualifications

Employees have gained self-confidence

Enabled us to meet legal requirements

Employees have become better at their jobs

Helped our longer-term competitiveness

Had a beneficial impact on the “bottom line”

Helped improve staff retention

Helped us to attract good staff

Led to a reduction in absenteeism

We have been able to provide a new service

0% 25% 50% 75% 100%

0

5

3

3

10

8

0

0

0

0

0

0

15

30

25

33

33

28

28

18

18

18

15

15

63

43

40

28

15

8

3

5

3

3

3

0

23

23

33

38

43

58

70

78

80

80

83

85

Agree Disagree Too early to say Don't know


8. Employer engagement and ongoing relationships

Initiating a relationship with an employer, and developing that relationship in a effective and sustainable manner is a critically important part of the brokerage process. Theories and evidence on brokerage suggest that there is likely to be a positive relationship between the quality of the brokerage relationship as perceived by the parties involved and the quality of the outcomes which can be achieved. This will be particularly important as Skills for Care and the sub-regional care partnerships look to move forward this first developmental iteration of the Social Care Skills Brokerage programme.

First contact

Employers were asked whether it was themselves or the broker who had initiated the first formal contact. Figure 3.13, below, illustrates their responses together with comparative data from the national evaluation of Train to Gain.

With 60 per cent of first contacts initiated by the broker, the most common way for the brokerage relationship to begin with employers in the West Midlands programme is comparable with the reported national average. Interestingly, the data shows that employers involved in the West Midlands programme were 11 per cent more likely than the national average to initiate contact with the skills broker. Whilst the employer survey did not probe the nature of the first contact in any greater depth, a number of respondents commented that they had become aware of the brokerage service through their existing relationship with their respective sub-regional care partnership before any formal contact with the broker took place. Given their prior awareness respondents tended toward the view that the question of ‘who contacted whom first’ was somewhat moot; and what was more significant was that when the first formal contact with a broker occurred it was neither unexpected nor perceived to be unsolicited. This effective ‘pre-selling’ of the brokerage service on the part of the sub-regional care partnerships appears to have contributed to the harmonisation of knowledge, expectations and even outcomes on the part of participating employers; such that a cross-tab analysis of the data reveals no significant differences between those employers who initiated the contact and those employers who were contacted first by a broker.

Impartiality

Given the apparently high level of prior knowledge about the brokerage service on the part of employers it is not surprising that a very high proportion of employers - some 90 per cent - felt that skills brokers and the brokerage service offered through the West Midlands project was impartial and independent of training providers. Figure 3.14, below, shows the comparison between the views expressed by social care employers in the West Midlands and employers surveyed as part of the national evaluation of Train to Gain

On the subject of broker impartiality, one respondent commented:

“[broker name] was the fourth broker who had approached us. The others had come from private training companies and we wanted to support a public project. We also knew the Skills for Care name and we’d attended some [sub-regional care partnership] events which had all

Figure 3.13 Who initiated contact between the employer and the broker? WM Sample n=55

Employer contacted broker

Broker contacted employer

Don’t know

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

5%

68%

27%

3%

60%

38%



been very good. And I think it was a good decision because [broker name] has been absolutely fabulous.”

The ongoing relationship

The prospect of a sustained relationship between brokers and employers is likely to condition and strengthen that relationship; demanding an honest, ongoing conversation as the foundation of an effective brokerage service. But the prospect of such a sustained relationship may also cripple the brokerage service; with currently engaged employers consuming the majority of the services’ resource and leaving little scope to extend the service and its benefits beyond this client base. The ideal situation then is one in which engaged employers understand and respect the capacity and capability of the brokerage service and have a level of trust in their broker which gives them the confidence to approach their broker only when a specific, defined need arrises. The skills brokerage programme appears to have struck this balance effectively.

Figure 3.14 Perceived impartiality of skills brokers WM Sample n=55

Yes

No

Don’t know

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

12%

11%

77%

5%

5%

90%


In considering the ongoing relationship between themselves and their skills brokers, employers were asked to consider which of four statements best reflected their relationship with their skills broker. A quarter of respondents felt that they had an ongoing contact with the broker (very similar to the nationally reported figure of 23 per cent). No West Midlands respondents envisaged no further contact with the broker (compared with a national average of 17 per cent). Most promisingly 73 per cent of West Midlands respondents reported that, although their contact with the brokers was limited at present, they were confident that they could re-connect with the broker in the future where a training need arose. This suggests that social care employers who have been involved with the skills brokerage programme view their engagement with the broker as a long-term, demand-led relationship.

As the aspiration, direction and capacity of the brokerage programme develops, Skills for Care, care partnership and brokers will need to carefully communicate changes in emphasis to employers to ensure that employers can continue to engage with the brokerage service in a way which is both effective and efficient.

Figure 3.15 Anticipated future relationship with skills broker WM Sample n=55

Ongoing contact

Limited contact

Expecting contact from broker

Do not envisage further dealings

0% 20% 40% 60% 80%

17%

13%

45%

23%

0%

3%

73%

25%



To further explore the relationship between employers and their skills brokers, employers were asked how many contacts they had had with the broker subsequent to the initial contact. Fourty-three per cent of respondents reported having between two and four contacts with their broker, whilst 30 per cent reported having more than four contacts with the broker, figure 3.16 below.

On average respondents in the West Midlands sample met with brokers an average of 3.7 times whilst respondents to the national evaluation met with brokers an average 3.9 times. This is illustrated in figure 3.17, below.

Cross-tab analysis shows that respondents in the West Midlands study who reported an “ongoing relationship” with the broker averaged 6.0 contacts whilst those reporting “limited current contact” averaged just 3.0 contacts. The comparable averages from the national evaluation sample were 6.0 and 3.8 respectively.

Figure 3.16 Reported number of contacts with skills broker n=55

Less than 2

2 to 4

More than 4

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

30%

43%

28%

When discussing the ongoing relationship and contacts with their brokers, employers who had been involved in the West Midlands project tended to conceptualise and discuss the relationship with their skills broker as a component in the broader relationship with their respective sub-regional care partnership. When discussing contacts with brokers, a number of respondents commented that they often saw the broker at a sub-regional care partnership event, and might take the opportunity to ‘say hello’ and ‘catch up’ but wouldn’t consider that to be a formal brokerage-related contact. In this way brokers were seen to be accessible without the need for time-consuming, formal contact and brokerage was not seen in a simple linear sense (with an ONA, leading to a proposal, leading to training) but seen in a more itterative. One respondent, discussing engagement with the broker and with the wider services offered by the sub-regional care partnership, commented:

“I think third sector organisation miss out on lots of the training offer, whereas statutory services seem to know much more about what’s going on. The relationship we’ve got with [sub-regional care partnership] has been really helpful for us in addressing this - and of course the brokers are part of that - but there’s a bigger relationship alongside. It’s not just about the brokers.”

Figure 3.17 Average number of contacts with the skills broker WM Sample n=55

0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0

3.9

3.7



9. Employer priorities and satisfaction

Establishing, managing and satisfying employer expectations is a critical factor in the effectiveness and sustainability of the West Midlands Social Care Skills Brokerage programme. Employers expectations of the West Midlands programme were set high and were generally very well met with employer satisfaction in the programme outperforming the national average satisfaction with Train to Gain on every measure.

Employers priorities

Employers were asked (ex-poste) to specify their priorities for the brokerage service by rating the importance of a number of broker attributes on a scale from one to ten. Average employer responses against each attributes are illustrated in figure 3.18, right.

The first observation to make when looking over this data is that all nine attributes are rated relatively highly with only very small degree of discrimination between attributes. Specifically there is only a six per cent difference separating the highest average and the lowest average ratings. The variance in the data is also fairly small with ratings between seven and ten accounting for 96.4 per cent of the average variance across the nine attributes. This demonstrates that expectations were both high and consistent across the nine attributes we tested. The national average expectations are somewhat lower (although still high) and comparably consistent with only about 9 per cent difference separating the highest average and lowest average ranking. The consistency of the West Midlands ratings is likely to be a product of the small sample size and we would expect differences to become more marked (probably moving to a point of convergence with the national trends) if the sample size was increased.

By examining the rank correlation43 between brokerage service attributes in the West Midlands evaluation sample and the national sample we can give a measure of the relative similarity of the priorities of employers nationally and employers in the social care sector in the West Midlands. As figure 3.19 shows this test of correlation indicated that coefficient of correlation of 0.52 between the two sets of data; in other words about 52 percent of the variation in the one data set can be explained by variation in the other.

Figure 3.18 Reported priorities for skills brokerage service attributes WM Sample n=55

Broker can identify funding

Broker understands our training needs

Broker follows up actions in a timely manner

Broker can translate our needs into an action plan

Broker has knowledge about the social care sector

Broker understands our organisation and its business

Broker is easy to get hold of

Broker can signpost us to a range of providers

Broker gives impartial advice

7 8 9 10

8.15

8.14

7.99

8.78

8.33

8.20

8.30

8.85

8.90

8.93

9.08

9.13

9.15

9.18

9.23

9.38

9.50


Figure 3.19 Rank correlation between West Midlands sample and National sample attribute prioritisation

0

2

4

6

8

0 2 4 6 8

R² = 0.5228

Nat

iona

l Sam

ple

Ran

king

West Midlands Sample Ranking


The second observation to make from the data on employers priorities for the brokerage service is that there are generally few surprises in the West Midlands data. The only notable aberrations in the trend toward universally high expectations came in two areas; the priority accorded to brokers understanding of the employers organisation and its business and the priority accorded to brokers impartiality. These data are highlighted in red and blue frames respectively in figure 3.20, below. With the former, a significant minority of employers (five per cent) suggested that the onus was on the employer rather than the brokers to understand the organisation and its business. Similarly with the latter a significant minority of employers (five per cent) suggested that the impartiality of brokers was generally of low importance as the onus again was on employer to gather advice from a range of sources, including brokers, before making a decision independently on behalf of their organisation. Whilst the data set is not sufficiently large to allow for a robust exploration of the attributes of employers who expressed our suggestion, based on the empirical observations of our survey researchers is that views such as this are more likely to be associated with larger, more capable organisation who already have some degree of dedicated in-house capacity (e.g. a training officer) to make and resource training and workforce development decisions on behalf of their organisation. This suggests that larger and more capable social care employers have relatively less need of support from initiatives such as the West Midlands skills brokerage programme.

Figure 3.20 Employers priorities for the brokerage service

Employer rating (1 to 10 where 1 is less important)Employer rating (1 to 10 where 1 is less important)Employer rating (1 to 10 where 1 is less important)Employer rating (1 to 10 where 1 is less important)Employer rating (1 to 10 where 1 is less important)Employer rating (1 to 10 where 1 is less important)Employer rating (1 to 10 where 1 is less important)Employer rating (1 to 10 where 1 is less important)Employer rating (1 to 10 where 1 is less important)Employer rating (1 to 10 where 1 is less important)

Rating 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Broker can identify funding 0 0 0 0 3 0 3 8 15 73Broker understands our organisations training needs 0 0 0 0 3 0 5 10 15 68Broker has knowledge about the social care sector 0 0 0 0 3 5 0 18 18 58

Broker understands our organisation and its business 0 0 5 0 0 0 3 10 25 58Broker follows up actions quickly 0 0 0 0 0 0 8 18 20 55

Broker is able to translate our needs into an action plan 0 0 0 0 0 3 8 15 20 55

Broker is easy to get hold of 0 0 0 0 0 3 5 23 23 48Broker can signpost us to a range of training providers 0 0 0 0 3 3 10 18 20 48

Broker gives impartial advice 0 0 0 0 5 0 5 23 25 43

Employers satisfaction

Employers were asked to rate their satisfaction with the service they had received from their broker on basis of the same nine service attributes which were used to explore their priorities for the brokerage service. In the same way as before, employers were asked to rate their satisfaction on a scale from one to ten (where a higher numerical score denoted greater satisfaction).

The satisfaction scores reported by employers, illustrated in figure 3.21 below, are an emphatic endorsement of the quality of the service offered by the skills brokerage programme’s brokers; with the West Midlands programme appearing to outperform national Train to Gain brokerage across every measure tested.

Figure 3.21 Reported satisfaction with skills brokerage services WM Sample n=55

Broker understood our training needs

Broker had knowledge about the social care sector


Broker translated our needs into an action plan

Broker was easy to get hold of

Broker understood our organisation and its business

Broker signposted us to a range of providers

Broker followed up actions in a timely manner

Broker could identify funding

7 8 9 10

7.44

7.31

7.19

7.66

7.28

8.01

7.89

7.30

8.41

8.58

8.68

8.75

8.80

8.80

8.93

9.03

9.18



Employers were then asked to provide an overall satisfaction rating out of 10 for the skills brokerage programme. The West Midlands programme scored a very impressive 9.0 out of 10. In comparison employers nationally rated their overall satisfaction with Train to Gain brokerage services at 7.5 out of 10.

Commenting on overall satisfaction, one employer said:

“[my broker] was just brilliant. Being a manager you don’t get much time to do these things. Working with the broker it was like it was all just taken away from me - but not in a bad way, in the best possible way. It was like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.”

Figure 3.22 Reported overall satisfaction with skills brokerage services WM Sample n=55

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

7.5

9.0


Employers and brokers specialism

A central tenet in the design of the West Midlands social care skills brokerage programme is that the tacit knowledge of brokers, built up through their professional experience in the social care field, will add value to the brokerage service. Testing this assumption with employers through the employer survey yielded some interesting results, as illustrated in figures 3.23, 3.24 and 3.25 below.

The overwhelming majority of employers questioned (78 per cent) were aware that the broker they worked with had personal professional experience in the social care sector. In many cases it seemed that brokers has been quite deliberate in introducing themselves by explaining that had become brokers after working in social care. In some cases brokers appear to have gone further and made explicit statements that the support they could offer would be enhanced by their years of professional experience.

Figure 3.23 Employer awareness of brokers professional experience in the social care sector

n=55

3%

20%

78%

YesNoDon’t know


Employers were generally less aware that not all skills brokers (i.e. brokers outside the social care skills brokerage programme) had experience in specific sectors. In the 40 per cent of cases where employers were aware that not all brokers had specific sectoral experience, most seemed to have learned this from the brokers introductory ‘patter’. When questioned, one employer commented:

“oh yes, [the broker] told me that she had worked in social care for some time and that that wasn’t the case with all brokers. So actually not all skills brokers had experience in the same field as the businesses they were working with. That seemed a bit silly to me. I’d have thought that having some experience in the same field was essential really.”

Lastly employers were asked to speculate on how the professional experience of brokers they had worked with might impact on the effectiveness of the brokerage service. Employer responses here fall into three distinct groups: the indoctrinated, the indifferent and the sceptical. The vast majority of employers (86 per cent) fit into the

Figure 3.24 Employer awareness that not all brokers have professional experience in the same sector as the organisation they support

n=55

3%

58%

40%

YesNoDon’t know

first group; feeling that sectoral experience would lead to a more effective brokerage service. A significant minority of 13 per cent of employers considered that diagnostic skills and aptitude were the most important determinants of effective brokers and brokerage and that, as such, professional experience within the sector was not likely to result in an brokerage service which was either more nor less effective. For a small number of employers (the sceptical three per cent) there was a concern that the professional sectoral experience of brokers might hamper their ability to think abstractly about the problems that social care businesses were facing; in essence leading brokers to recommend conventional solutions when more radical steps were called for.

What is interesting in these responses is that the indifferent and sceptical responses tended to come from larger, more capable social care organisations. As we have discussed previously these tend to be employers whose training and development needs are more mature and more considered; having moved beyond the simple compliance stage.

Figure 3.25 Employer perception of the relationship between brokers professional experience and brokerage service effectiveness

n=55

3%13%

43%

43%

Significantly more effectiveSlightly more effectiveNeither more nor less effectiveSlightly less effective


Comparing priorities and satisfaction

Having explored employers priorities for the brokerage service (see figure 3.14 above) employers were then asked to report on their satisfaction with each of the nine attributes of the brokerage service by rating the attributes on a scale from one to ten. Figure 3.26, below, illustrates employers priorities for the brokerage service (blue bars) together with their reported satisfaction with each of the attributes of the brokerage service (green bars)

Figure 3.26 Comparing employee priorities and satisfaction WM Sample n=55


Broker understands our organisations training needs


Broker is able to translate our needs into an action plan




Broker can signpost us to a range of training providers


8.00 8.50 9.00 9.50

8.93

8.68

8.80

8.75

9.03

8.80

8.58

9.18

9.41

8.90

8.93

9.08

9.13

9.15

9.18

9.23

9.38

9.50

Employer Rating (0 to 10)

West Midlands Employer Priority RatingsWest Midlands Employer Satisfaction Ratings

Figure 3.27 below shows more clearly the differential between employers priorities and satisfaction across the nine brokerage service attributes. We can observe that in all but one attribute priorities are not matched by satisfaction. This is not unexpected and is due in part to the extremely high expectations which the service has built. The priority/satisfaction differential does provide some useful pointers for improving the client-facing element of the brokerage service. For instance, ensuring that brokers could be reached by mobile phone or ensuring that an administrative officer was available to take broker calls and book appointments would likely improve satisfaction around being able to get hold of a broker easily.

Figure 3.27 Employee priority/satisfaction differential n=55


Broker understands our organisations training needs


Broker is able to translate our needs into an action plan




Broker can signpost us to a range of training providers


-8% -6% -4% -2% 0% 2%


What variables influence reported employer satisfaction?

Using the simple, single measure of overall satisfaction with the brokerage programme (see figure 3.22 above), we carried out extensive analysis to identify variables which produced any significant change in this measure of reported satisfaction. Of all the variables we tested the only one which yielded a noteworthy result was they type of training undertaken.

To identify those employers who had used the West Midlands social care brokerage programme to meet statutory training requirements we filtered employer data to include only those employers who had told us that their participation in the brokerage programme had helped them to meet a legal requirement (see figure 3.11, above). Filtering the data in this way drove the average overall satisfaction score up from 9.0 to 9.2 whilst filtering to exclude those employers who used brokerage support to help them to meet a legal requirement led the score for overall satisfaction to drop to 8.1. These differences are illustrated figure 3.28, below.

Figure 3.28 Changing overall employer satisfaction given the presence or absence of a statutory motivation to train.

n=55

All employers [base]

Legal requirement [-ve]

Legal requirement [+ve]

National Average Satisfaction

6.0 6.5 7.0 7.5 8.0 8.5 9.0 9.5

7.5

9.2

8.1

9.0

The conclusion that we can draw from this analysis is that employers experience of the West Midlands social care skills brokerage service is better where their training requirements are relatively common (e.g. level two qualifications in health and social care, lifting and handling training, food safety training). Whilst this conclusion is relatively commonsensical, its implications for the future of the brokerage programme are profound.

The suggestion from the analysis is that brokers are generally less adept at servicing the needs of employers with relatively less straightforward training requirements. This may be because a number of issues operating either in isolation or in concert:

• Broker knowledge of training providers who can meet more advanced training needs may be less well developed than their knowledge of providers of common training packages

• Broker knowledge and understanding of social care organisations with more advanced training needs may be less well developed than their knowledge and understanding of social care organisations with more common training requirements

• Brokers geographical areas of operation may hamper them in supporting the training and development needs of larger, more complex organisations which cross multiple sub-regional care partnership areas

• Brokers may be unaware of specific local drivers for training (e.g a specific requirement for training introduced via local authority commissioning criteria)

• The Train to Gain system is not well suited to supporting complex, unconventional training needs.

As more social care organisations reach and exceed statutory training requirements and training and development becomes more directly driven by desire to improve services the issue of satisfying complex training and development needs will become more significant in the life of the brokerage programme. Skills for Care and its partners should give careful consideration now to the way in which the programme and its delivery mechanisms can be shaped to satisfy increasingly diverse and complex development requirements.


Productivity and employer satisfaction

Using broker-level employer satisfaction data from the employer survey, together with broker productivity data we have constructed an analysis of the rank correlation between employer satisfaction and broker productivity. In this analysis brokers are ranked in order of productivity and then ranked separately in order of satisfaction score. The ranks are then compared to examine the strength of any correlation between them.

In figure 3.29, below, we see that the rank correlation between employer satisfaction and broker productivity is about 0.5, indicating has about 50 per cent of the variation in satisfaction can be accounted for in terms of broker productivity. Whilst this clearly leaves 50 per cent which cannot be explained in terms of productivity, it does suggest that raising the productivity of all brokers to at least the current average will have the effect of improving productivity further.

Figure 3.29 Rank correlation between employer satisfaction and broker productivity

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

R² = 0.5102

Em

plo

yer

Mea

n S

atis

fact

ion

Ran

k

Broker Productivity Rank


5. Conclusions

Conclusions

Section four:

Co

nclu

sio

nsTraining, skills and performance; future directions for social care skills brokerage

The West Midlands social care skills brokerage programme has been a pragmatic and effective response to the challenge of workforce training and development in the region’s private, voluntary and independent care sector. Having evaluated the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the programme, we can state with confidence that the programme has had a positive impact on increasing the supply of skilled workers within the social care sector in the region, over and above the increase in supply which would likely have taken place had the programme not existed. The skills brokerage programme has also done much to cement the relationship between social care employers and sub-regional care partnerships; an valuable investment which - if carefully managed - has the potential to pay marked dividends over coming years. Skills for Care West Midlands, Business Link West Midlands and of course the sub-regional care partnerships and skills brokers should be congratulated; their work together has delivered an impressive initiative which has made a very real contribution to the development of the social care workforce.

Whilst it is right to report and celebrate the successes of the programme, it is also important to look forward, making a coolheaded assessment of what the future might hold for social care skills brokerage. Although the performance of the programme to date has been strong, a careful reading of the evidence gathered through the evaluation suggests that there may be some threats to the sustainability of this performance.

Whilst the resources available through Train to Gain are central to the “offer” of the social care skills brokerage programme we understand that the brokerage has a value beyond simply being a conduit for Train to Gain. At present the reliance of the programme upon on Train to Gain funding makes it vulnerable to any variance in Train to Gain eligibility criteria. We know from employers that the ability to access funded training is a key expectation of their involvement with the programme. We know too that satisfaction with

the brokerage programme tends to decrease (albeit slightly) where it its is not possible to identify funding to pay for identified training requirements.

With basic training standards in the social care sector mandated by statute it was no surprise to find that some that 78 per cent of respondents to the evaluation’s employer survey reported that they had accessed training to help them meet a legal requirement. As more and more social care employers reach these minimum standards brokers will find that the pre-compliance cohort, which has been a ready market for their support, will shrink rapidly. Brokers will encounter progressively more difficulty in identifying and engaging employers who have training needs which can be addressed straightforwardly through the Train to Gain regime; the cost and effort of engaging employers will rise and the output of the programme will fall.

Just as the employers we spoke with saw their relationship with their skills broker as part of continuum of support from the care partnership, so the brokerage programme needs to be reconsidered in terms of its contribution to a continuum of engagement and support. The looming challenge for brokers and for the brokerage programme will be to continue to support employers whose training and development needs have progressed beyond the basic regulatory compliance stage. Whilst some of the requisite elements to achieve this - not least a foundation of good relationships - are in place, the balance of evidence we have from the evaluation suggests that the brokerage programme in it current form is not yet comprehensively equipped to perform effectively in this developed role. Although employee satisfaction with the programme was found to be consistently high, and consistently exceeded reported employer satisfaction with Train to Gain brokerage nationally, the levels of employer satisfaction amongst those employers who contacted brokers with post-compliance training needs was more than ten percentage points lower than the satisfaction of employers with pre-compliance needs. There are a range of reasons to explain this satisfaction differential. In some cases employers were less satisfied because funding was not available to support their more advanced needs. In other cases employers were less satisfied because their broker was unaware of, or unable to identify training providers to meet their needs. In a


small number of cases employers told us that brokers did not have the skills to analyse their more advanced needs effectively.

Re-tooling the existing brokerage programme to meet the requirements of more demanding employers whose training and development needs are more diverse and more complex would be straighforward enough. But simply re-tooling in this way would be to miss the more fundamental issue at the heart of the brokerage programme. The brokerage programme as it is currently conceived exists to increase the number of trained employees within the social care sector in the West Midlands. The effectiveness of the programme and its performance is measured in terms of the number of ONAs delivered: more ONAs equals a more effective performance and fewer ONAs a less effective performance. These measures allow us to be certain that the programme has had an impact in increasing the supply of skilled workers within the care sector. What is less certain, however, is what impact of this up-skilling has had on the quality of social care being delivered here in the West Midlands.

Workforce development and care quality: Forging the missing link

Statistics from the Care Quality Commission reveal that the West Midlands has a higher percentage of “Poor” and “Adequate” social care providers and a lower percentage of “Good” providers than the national average (Figure 4.1, below).

Investment in training and workforce development will continue to be an important component in any moves to alter this unenviable position but training and development will not do the job alone44. Instead a plural and more deliberate effort will be required; with brokers and brokerage at the hub in an expanded role which sees them brokering a wider range of supports and providing more in the way of direct facilitation of change. Whilst the list below is certainly not exhaustive we believe that using brokerage support to drive up social care quality will require ten distinct elements to be in place. These include:

• training provision for owners, managers and social care workers which is more specifically concerned with improving the performance of social care organisations and quality of care that social care provision

• a broader brokerage offer which sees brokers supporting employers not just in terms of brokering social care training, but also brokering the wider range of services to business that Business Link and it partners provide.

• the need to decouple financial payments to care partnerships from the number of units of ONA that their brokers deliver; as long as a unit of provision attracts a unit of reward the brokerage programme will find it difficult to break free from the mentality of delivering unitised support.

• care partnership-level monitoring systems to evidence the link between care partnership support and improved performance and quality in social care organisations.

• the exploration or development of a wider range of sources of funding to invest in social care improvement; recognising that Train to Gain can only funding a limited range of improvement in social care organisations.

Figure 4.1 CQC rankings of social care providers within the West Midlands and nationally

Poor

Adequate

Good

Excellent

0 % 10 % 20 % 30 % 40 % 50 % 60 % 70 %

18%

63%

17%

2%

18%

57%

22%

3%

West Midlands Region All English Regions


• an even closer working relationship between brokers and employers; not just to broker external solutions but to facilitate internal solutions (including learning) and to actively support the implementation of solutions (external or internal) to ensure that investment translates into improved performance.

• local policy commitment and commissioning arrangements which fully embrace their market making role; actively using commissioning to drive up the quality and capacity of the local social care provider base.

• a closer working relationship between care partnerships, brokers, Skills for Care, local authority commissioners, regulators and consumers of care services to ensure that there is a broadly shared conception of what constitutes “quality” in social care provision.

• greater investment on the part of social care organisations in internal learning and improvement processes; involving trained staff to drive improvement by making use of their skills and knowledge.

• more shared learning between social care providers (especially between very small organisations) and co-production in the development and provision of training through mechanisms such as action learning sets45.

Whilst many of these elements may sound ambitious, we are fortunate to have a developing model within the region of how this type of “brokerage plus” model might work in practice. Figure 4.2, right, illustrates the way in which Warwickshire Country Council is using a blend of commissioning strategies and brokered support to achieve impressive results in the transformation of social care in the county.

Building on these concluding remarks we offer a further eight recommendations, in additional to those outlined on pages 6-9.

Figure 4.2 Using brokerage to improve the quality of care in Warwickshire

Warwickshire County Council and the Warwickshire Quality Partnership (WQP) have taken a strategic approach to improving the quality of social care offered by the county’s private, voluntary and independent sector providers. The Warwickshire approach, set out in the council’s 2008 Improving Lives Strategy46 , uses a blend of support from WQP, skills brokerage from the Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership for Care and contractual incentives through the strategic commissioning process to drive up standards across the provider base.

Focusing in the first instance on residential care homes, the strategy aims to ensure that Warwickshire has no providers with a zero star CSCI/CQC rating and that all providers reach the two star standard within two years and the three star standard within five years. Whilst weaker performing providers are not explicitly targeted under the strategy, WQP and the council’s strategic commissioning team have prioritised engagement with those providers who have the greatest potential for improvement.

Support on offer under the strategy includes Train to Gain skills brokerage, help to complete NMDS-SC returns, free access to an online common induction standard toolkit and access on demand to a range of other improvement and learning tools. As well as the Organisational Needs Assessment (ONA) element of the skills brokerage process to access Train to Gain resources, WQP has also used the ONA as a basis for referring care providers to Business Link West Midlands for support from specialist business advisors. Common areas of business support needs include marketing, business planning, business development, managing change and people management. As well as using sector-led intelligence to shape its menu of support services, WQP has also developed a regular, structured dialogue with CSCI/CQC to ensure that its support is closely tailored to the developing expectations of the regulator.

The array of multi-agency support on offer, brokered by WQP, is free, impartial and confidential. The overarching focus on improving the quality of care provision means that the support is becoming increasingly holistic; concerned with strengthening all areas of a care providers business and not just those which have a direct impact on care quality. With no “hard sell” and with providers free to decline any offer of support, the emphasis of the Warwickshire model is very much on developing long-term facilitative relationships with the county’s care providers.

In its first year the Warwickshire Improving Lives Strategy has achieved an impressive degree of success. The number of number of zero star rated social care providers in the county has fallen from thirteen to none.

Looking to the future, WQP recognises that moving the county’s care providers to ever higher levels of performance and quality will require a step change in the level of support on offer. Whilst the emphasis on building and maintaining relationships with providers will remain paramount and the support offer will retain its specialist sectoral flavor, the need to offer or broker access to mainstream business improvement services will be increasingly important.


https://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/corporate/committe.nsf/f97183b3a13d475d80256f7000397ba1/565666b5e1527e558025746500366423/$FILE/CS%2520-%2520Improving%2520Lives%2520Strategy.lw.%255B249KB%255D.pdf


16 Skills for Care should consider the feasibility of funding (either independently or in partnership) a modest innovation and improvement grants programme for social care providers (or consortia of providers) in the West Midlands. The programme would support the piloting of solutions to improve care quality through workforce development with the potential to generate some very valuable learning resources.

17 Skills for Care should decouple the remuneration of care partnerships from the number of units of ONA delivery, replacing the system of payment by outputs with an system of outcome-oriented multi-year service level agreements to drive up the quality of care through investments in the social care workforce.

18 Skills for Care, working with care partnerships and brokers should seek opportunities with social care providers to pilot and test the feasibility of a range of internal quality improvement methodologies such as Kaizen teams/ quality circles.

19 Skills for Care, working with Business Link West Midlands and care partnerships should consider the viability and benefits of training brokers to the new Business Link integrated brokerage service standards

20 Skills for Care, care partnerships and brokers should ensure that effective relationships are build and maintained with local adult social care commissioners within each of the local authority areas. Brokers have an important role to play in informing local policies through their knowledge of commissioning practices in other areas and an equally important role in supporting the effective implementation of policies.

21 Skills for Care should develop its regional relationship with the Care Quality Commission to ensure that role of investment in workforce is clearly understood and valued by the regulator.

22 Skills for Care and care partnerships should work together to ensure that each care partnership has appropriate and effective systems in place to monitor the impact of their work with social care employers.

23 Skills for Care and care partnerships should explore the role that chambers of commerce and councils of voluntary service can play in supporting and growing the capacity and capability of social care providers.


5. Appendices

Appendices

Section five:

Appendix One: Methodology


Appendix Two: Recommendations Cost/Benefit Matrix


Appendix Three: Endnotes


1 SCOURFIELD, P. (2008). Going for brokerage: A task of ‘independent support’ or social work? British Journal of Social Work Advanced Access, pub. 21st October 2008; 1-202 RABIEE, P., MORAN, N., and GLENDENNING, C. (2008). Individual budgets: Lessons for early user experiences. British Journal of Social Work Advance Access Publication, pub. 17th March 2008; 1-18.3 FULTON, K., KINSELLA, P., and GOODWIN, G. (2008). Good practice in support planning and brokerage. London: Department of Health. Available at:http://www.dhcarenetworks.org.uk/_library/Resources/Personalisation/Personalisation_advice/Good_Practice_in_Support_Planning_and_Brokerage.pdf4 Train to Gain is the UK Governmentʼs flagship service to help employers access training advice and support. The service was launched nationally in August 2006. Originally run by the Learning and Skills Council, responsibility for the management of Train to Gain passed to Regional Development agencies in April 2009. Train to Gain is delivered by Business Link as part of their wider portfolio of services to business5 We should make clear the the programme is still ongoing beyond this point6 Data provided by Business Link West Midlands has a number of data points missing so arithmetic means are used to estimate the likely impact for the project to date. Ensuring that Business Link is able to provide good quality data going forward will be an important objective for the effective management of the programme7 The principal specific criticism of the current method of data management is that data from employer ONAs only exist in text format and require manual translation into spreadsheet format to allow meaningful analysis to take place. At present they system which Business Link West Midlands uses to capture the data from ONA documents stores records individually (so all of the data on employer ʻAʼ is contained within record ʻAʼ) making cross tab analysis extremely difficult.8 Statistic from Skills for Careʼs NMDS-SC standard cross-tab analysis of organisations and workforce (v.31st December 2008) available at: http://www.nmds-sc-online.org.uk/research/researchdocs.aspx?id=3

9 DICKERSON, A.P., HOMENIDOU, K., and WILSON, R.A (2006). Working Futures 2004-2014; Sectoral report. Sector Skills Development Agency: Wath upon Dearne, p.200-207.A v a i l a b l e a t : h t t p : / / w w w. u k c e s . o rg . u k / P D F / Wo r k i n g % 2 0 F u t u r e%2020042014%20Sectoral%20Report%20R%20060215.pdf10 GREEN, A.E., HOMENIDOU, K., WHITE, R., and WILSON, R.A. (2006). Working Futures 2004-2014; Spatial Report. Sector Skills Development Agency: Wath upon Dearne, p.111-112. Available at: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/ier/research/current/wf/wfspatialreport2004-2014.pdf11 CSCI (2009) The state of social care in England, 2007-08. London: Commission for Social Care Inspection, p 102. Available at: http://www.csci.org.uk/PDF/SOSC08%20Report%2008_Web.pdf12 GREEN, A., and SAKAMOTO, A. (2001). Models of high skills in national competition strategies. In: BROWN, P., GREEN., A., and LAUDER, H. (2001) High skills: Globalisation, competitiveness and skill formation. Oxford: OUP; p.56-160.13 LEICH, S. (2006). Prosperity for all in the global economy; Final report. London: HM Treasury. Available at: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/leitch_finalreport051206.pdf14 The business of assessing national competitiveness is a fraught and contested one. For every statistic which suggests a country is sliding down the notional hierarchy there seem to be a dozen others measures which claim with equal urgency that the given country is on the rise.15 See the World Economic Forumʼs annual Global Competitiveness Index, published from 1979 onwards.16 KERSLEY, B., , ALPIN, C., FORTH, J., BRYSON, A., BEWLEY, G., DIX, G. and OXENBRIDGE, S. (2006). Inside the workplace: Findings from the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey. London: Routledge17 The statutory basis for training in the social care sector was established through the Care Standards Act 2000 and its introduction of National Minimum Standards. See http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/ukpga_20000014_en_118 REF document email by SB on 10th April 200919 MARSDEN, P.V. (1982). Brokerage behavior in restricted exchange networks. In: MARSDEN, P.V. and LIN, N., eds. Social Structure and Network Analysis. Beverly Hills: Sage., p.202.20 RYDGREN, J. (2005). Bridging different worlds? Economy, politics and brokerage roles in Sweden. Acta Sociologica, 48(2): 117-129

http://www.dhcarenetworks.org.uk/_library/Resources/Personalisation/Personalisation_advice/Good_Practice_in_Support_Planning_and_Brokerage.pdf






http://www.nmds-sc-online.org.uk/research/researchdocs.aspx?id=3




http://www.ukces.org.uk/PDF/Working%20Future%2020042014%20Sectoral%20Report%20R%20060215.pdf




http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/ier/research/current/wf/wfspatialreport2004-2014.pdf




http://www.csci.org.uk/PDF/SOSC08%20Report%2008_Web.pdf




http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/leitch_finalreport051206.pdf




http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/ukpga_20000014_en_1

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/ukpga_20000014_en_1


21 BLOK, A. (1974). The Mafia of a Sicilian Village, 1860-1960. New York: Harper and Row.22 LIND, B.E., TIRADO, M., BUTTS, C.T., and PETRESCU-PRAHOVA, M.G. (2008). Brokerage roles in disaster response: organisational mediation in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. International Journal of Emergency Management, 5(1-2): 75-99.23 HARAGADON, A. (2005). Technology brokering and innovation: Linking strategy, practice and people. Strategy and Leadership, 33(1): 32-36.24 See POLANYI, M. (1967). The Tacit Dimension. New York: Anchor Books25 Business Link West Midlands is the trading name of West Midlands Brokerages Services Ltd.

26 The responsibility for delivering Train to Gain was previously vested with the Learning and Skills Council and transfered to the RDA on [DATE]27 This score may well be 100% now as a number of brokers will now have completed their NVQ brokerage qualifications.28 An approximate calculation based on the mid-points of the categories shown in figure 2.1029 The where the percentages in each field do not equal 100 the remainder is attributable to brokers responding that there was no change (neither increase nor decrease) in that strand of activity.30 Programme output statistics provided by Business Link West Midlands31 The standard deviation for total ONA output at the partnership level EXCLUDING the data for Solihull is 18.2 whilst the coefficient of variation is 22%32 The measure of broker productivity is given by dividing the number of ONAs delivered by a given broker (derived from the Business Link programme output data) by number of weeks the broker reported being active as a broker (derived from the survey of brokers).

The measure of care partnership productivity is given by calculating the mean of the broker productivity scores for all of the brokers operating from a given care partnership33 For more on the employee sampling strategy see Appendix One34 Given the small size and unusual characteristics of the direct payments employer cohort, we have excluded them from the employer sample for the purposes of this evaluation.

35 Under the direct payment system, local authorities offer eligible individuals a personal financial allocation with which to purchase social care provision in line with an agreed care plan. For many direct payment recipients, an important part of taking charge of their own social care provision will be the employment of one or more personal assistants (PAs) to carry out personal care tasks. 36 Direct payment population statistics for 2001 are drawn from CSCI (2004) Direct Payments: What are the barriers? London: Commission for Social Care Inspection. Available at: http://www.csci.org.uk/PDF/direct_payments.pdf. The most recent statistics, for 2008, drawn from CSCI (2008) Social Services Performance Assessment Framework Indicators Adults. London: Commission for Social Care Inspection. Avai lable at http://www.csci.org.uk/professional/PDF/PAF_2008_LO_02.pdf.37 See particularly HM GOVERNMENT (2007). Putting people first: A shared vision and commitment to the transformation of adult social care. London: Department of Health. Available at: http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/P u b l i c a t i o n s / P u b l i c a t i o n s P o l i c y A n d g u i d a n c e / D H _ 0 8 1 1 1 8 ?IdcService=GET_FILE&dID=156660&Rendition=Web. DARZI. A.W. (2008). High quality care for all: NHS next stage review final report [CM 7432]. London: Department of Health., p.42. Available at: http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_085825?IdcService=GET_FILE&dID=168197&Rendition=Web. DOH (2005) Independence, Well-being and Choice: Our vision for the future of social care for adults in England [Cm 6499]. London: Department of Health. Available at: http://w w w . d h . g o v . u k / e n / P u b l i c a t i o n s a n d s t a t i s t i c s / P u b l i c a t i o n s /P u b l i c a t i o n s P o l i c y A n d G u i d a n c e / D H _ 4 1 0 6 4 7 7 ?IdcService=GET_FILE&dID=9210&Rendition=Web and DOH (2006) Our health, our care, our say: A new direction for community services [Cm 6737]. London: Depar tment o f Hea l th . Ava i l ab le a t : h t tp : / /www.dh .gov.uk /en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_4127453?IdcService=GET_FILE&dID=456&Rendition=Web38 CSCI (2009) The state of social care in England, 2007-08. London: Commission for Social Care Inspection, p 102. Available at: http://www.csci.org.uk/PDF/SOSC08%20Report%2008_Web.pdf39 POLICYWORKS ASSOCIATES LTD. (2009). “Iʼm safe because theyʼve been trained correctly”: Exploring the attitudes of direct payment employers in the West Midlands towards the training and development of personal assistants. Birmingham: Skills for Care West Midlands with the Learning and Skills Council.

http://www.csci.org.uk/PDF/direct_payments.pdf

http://www.csci.org.uk/PDF/direct_payments.pdf

http://www.csci.org.uk/professional/PDF/PAF_2008_LO_02.pdf




http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndguidance/DH_081118?IdcService=GET_FILE&dID=156660&Rendition=Web






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40 Data provided by Business Link West Midlands has a number of data points missing so arithmetic means are used to estimate the likely impact for the project to date. Ensuring that Business Link is able to provide better quality data going forward will be an important objective for the effective management of the programme

41 The term “psychological contract” describes the mutual obligations perceived by both employers and employees. Unlike the obligations outlined in a legal contract of employment, the obligations within the psychological contract will often be informal and imprecise: being inferred from action or precedent, or from statements made by the employer. Some obligations may be seen as 'promises' and others as 'expectations'. The importance of the psychological contract is that it captures the employees beliefs about their relationship with the employer and, as such, as significant implications for the the way in which the employee relates to the employer.For more information see: CONWAY, N. and BRINER, R. (2005). Understanding psychological contracts at work: a critical evaluation of theory and research. Oxford: Oxford University Press.42 As a valid methodological criticism of this evaluation it is worth noting that we were unable, given time and budgetary constraints, to consider the views of any employees who had received training as a result of their employers participation in the West Midlands Social Care Skills Brokerage programme. The national evaluation of Train to Gain was able to consider the views of learners and discovered that some 70 per cent of learners stating that they planned to stay with their current employer for the foreseeable future. Such a statistic should be sufficient to assure even the most skeptical of social care employer that training is unlikely to harm employee retention. For more on the employee views of Train to Gain see LSC (2008) Train to gain learner evaluation: Report from wave 1 research. Coventry: Learning and Skills Council. Available at: http://readingroom.lsc.gov.uk/lsc/National/nat-ttglearnerevaluation-may08.PDF43 Rank correlation is a useful statistical technique for examining the relationship between two data sets when different bases make direct comparison problematic. The data in data set ‘a’ and ‘b’ is ranked from 1 to 1n such that the highest value in each data set is attributed a rank of 1. The rank data is then plotted against each other to give an indication of the correlation in the data. A coefficient of correlation (r2) of 1 implies a perfect positive correlation and a coefficient of -1 implies a perfect negative correlation in which 100% of the variation in data set ‘a’ can be explained by variation in data set ‘b’ (or vice versa). A coefficient of 0 implies no correlation whatsoever.

44 The research literature on the relationship between investment in training and business performance is extensive and varied46. It is also less than conclusive, with studies generally failing to tease out a straightforward, causal relationship at the firm level between investment in training and improved performance47. The reason for this, we would suggest, is quite simple; it is that there is no straightforward, causal relationship there to be found48. Companies - and especially the small and medium-sized companies which characterise the private, voluntary and independent segment of the social care sector - exist in a dynamic context which presents opportunities and risks not always in equal measure. Companies who invest heavily in workforce training can still be crippled by poor strategy and equally companies who never invest to train their staff can have full order books for their product year on year. The best conclusion that we can draw from the literature is perhaps that it is “more feasible to demonstrate that organisational performance can be held back through a neglect of training activity”49

44 The are a number of useful summaries of the literature on the link between skills and firm-level performance. These including:TAMKIN, P., (2005). The contribution of skills to business performance. Brighton: Institute for Employment Studies. Available at: http://www.sfbn-mandl.org.uk/files/research/Contribution_of_Skills_to_Business_Performance-Tamkin_IIP.pdf and,

PATTON, D., MARLOW, S., and HANNON, P. (2000). The relationship between training and small firm performance: Research frameworks and lost quests. International Small Business Journal, 19(1): 11-27.44 One areas where the literature is reasonably in agreement is with regard to the provision of management training leads to demonstrable improvement in business performance, however again the link is not causal44 Also, it is worth noting that there are methodological weaknesses with many studies in this areas which make it impossible to attribute and improvement in performance to investment in training.44 HALLIER, J., and BUTTS, S. (1999). Employersʼ discover of training:Self-development, employability and the rhetoric of partnership. Employee Relations, 21(1); 80-95.45 Some very interesting evidence on the use of action learning sets to drive improvement at http://www.sfbn-mandl.org.uk/leadermodel.htm46 See https://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/corporate/committe.nsf/f97183b3a13d475d80256f7000397ba1/565666b5e1527e558025746500366423/$FILE/CS%2520-%2520Improving%2520Lives%2520Strategy.lw.%255B249KB%255D.pdf

http://readingroom.lsc.gov.uk/lsc/National/nat-ttglearnerevaluation-may08.PDF




http://www.sfbn-mandl.org.uk/files/research/Contribution_of_Skills_to_Business_Performance-Tamkin_IIP.pdf




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