Manchester City Council uses CareCubed to Set Their Standardised Framework Rates for Adult Supported Living
The Challenge
-
Fee rates for supported living negotiated at different points by different commissioners meaning a lack of consistency.
-
No clear rationale for variations in rates between providers.
-
Historic block contracts with rates that had been increased and supplemented over time.
-
The need to put new contractual arrangements in place.
The Solution
- Implementation of a framework for supported living, with banded rates, developed with provider input.
- A consistent operational approach to benchmarking fair and transparent costs of service provision.
- A collaborative approach for negotiations between provider and commissioner.
Results
- Building positive and productive provider relationships through transparent negotiations.
- Consistency and standardisation of placement costs across Manchester City Council.
- Standardised commissioning practice across mental health, learning disability and autism adult commissioning teams in Manchester City Council.
- Improved understanding of care costs.
CareCubed Cost of Care is the UK’s leading tool for providing data-driven benchmarks and evidence-led insights into adult social care costing negotiations. A valued tool in the UK for both commissioners and providers, CareCubed aims to streamline the care commissioning process, enabling commissioners to reduce pressures and better understand costings by working with providers.
Manchester City Council have held a CareCubed Cost of Care licence for a while, using it on an ad hoc basis to inform individual fee negotiations. When the Council needed to commission a new framework for supported living, they wanted to set standard rates for care and needed a firm basis on which to do this in a consistent way. The Council decided to use CareCubed to back up the work they were doing. Using the CareCubed templates, they gathered detailed cost information from a range of providers and used this to build bands of hourly rates across low, moderate and complex care as well as for waking and sleeping nights. Pre-procurement engagement tested these rates out with providers, who agreed they were fair.
“When we first started using CareCubed with a new provider, we would meet online to take them through the tool and help them understand why we were asking
the questions that we were. This initial investment of time improved relationships and means that we save lots of time – as those questions do not need answering each and every time. We have a shared understanding right from the outset.”
Since the framework went live, when referrals come in for new placements, the Brokerage team sends them out to providers, who after assessment, submit hourly rates and supporting information. If a provider’s proposed hourly rate sits above the top of Manchester’s banded rates, the team initiates a CareCubed assessment to review the package with the information provided.
Since the launch of the framework in April 2025, a tiny number of CareCubed assessments have been needed, showing how accurate the original fee setting was.
