Watch the Real Care Deal explainer video
Subscribe to our YouTube
You can also subscribe to our podcast channels below and have all our audio content delivered to your podcast account or RSS reader.
The Real Care Deal is Norfolk County Council’s Ethical Framework. It has been co-produced with residents, carers an commissioners and is designed to help people live their best lives.
Below you will find the four key recommendations from the Safeguarding Adults Review. We have since taken these ideas to the community to explore them further.
To create change in adult social care, we need a guiding vision, rooted in ethical considerations of promoting good lives well lived, and protecting the wider economic, social and environmental wellbeing of a local area. Procurement legislation in Scotland seeks to promote just such a vision but has no real equivalent in England. This recommendation encompasses feedback from workshops.
Commissioners must be able to distinguish between the workforce practices of different providers and prioritise those acting as ethical employers. This might include prioritising those companies that are accredited by the Living Wage Foundation; have effective training, development and supervision; sign up to an ethical care charter; outlaw false self-employment and zero-hours contracts; and encourage staff to participate in collective bargaining.
The ownership of all companies contracted to deliver public services should be available on public record. At the same time, a taxation test could require contracted private companies to demonstrate that they are based in the UK and subject to UK taxation law. Transparency: A transparency test could stipulate that where a public body has a legal contract with a private provider, that contract must ensure full openness and transparency with no recourse to the cover of “commercial confidentiality…”
A focus on smaller and more local commissioning is needed – a challenge for public services commissioners who generally favour dealing with a small number of large organisations with established contracting infrastructures. Smaller organisations hold vast expertise about the precise issues affecting people in their area and can serve very small or isolated communities or specific communities of interest.
