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Liam Byrne MP lays out the Government's plans for the involvement of the third sector in the delivery of health and social care services

I am delighted to have this opportunity to publicise our aspirations for the third sector, and its place in a modern Britain of opportunity and open economy. We have already come a long way from the monolithic health and social care systems of the past, where the public sector monopolised provision, and are on track to achieve a fully developed mixed economy of services and providers who understand the needs and – just as importantly - the wishes of the people they serve, and in which the person is at the centre of the whole process of assessment and delivery which is more tailored and responsive. And we are ensuring that the third sector will be an important and equal player in delivering this vision.

What do we mean by “third sector”? It is a term we have adopted to include the whole range of organisations in the voluntary and community sector, plus other values-driven, not-for-profit organisations such as social enterprises and co-operatives. We have stated a clear commitment in our recently published White Paper “Our health, our care, our say" to support the development of the third sector and social enterprise, as a way of ensuring that health and social care services continually improve, and are empowering not paternalistic by being tailored and responsive to local circumstances and individual requirements.

We have long recognised the considerable contribution that the third sector makes to health and social care: in 1998 we published the “Compact” , on relations between Government and the Voluntary and Community Sector in England, which acknowledged that the Government and the voluntary sector have distinct but complementary roles, and the added value of working in partnership towards common aims and objectives. What we now want to do is harness the considerable wealth of expertise, experience and talent of the third sector, and formalise the relationship to bring these providers security and stability, to help them develop and become key partners in delivering our vision.

Why do we think the third sector should be promoted in this way, and what is its distinctive added value in providing care services? If we want services that are patient-led, sensitive, tailored and sufficiently diverse to serve the multiplicity of communities in multi-cultural Britain, we must invest in the third sector as a major provider because:

• third sector providers are specialists in care delivery: they know and understand their client groups better than anyone else, they know how they want their services delivered, and what specific approaches work best with them (especially those who can be hard to reach or deal with, such as people with long-term conditions, long-term mental health problems, and drug and alcohol misusers);
• they are the experts at designing and delivering a range of different services around individual users; so that a person’s whole needs for various things such as accommodation, counselling, and benefits are dealt with in one place where and when it suits them;
• they have genuine commitment and dedication which puts people rather than profits first;
• their not-for-profit status means they can reinvest surpluses and help promote growth.

But there are issues we have identified which must be addressed in order to achieve our aims for wider third sector partnership in service provision. NHS commissioners of services are varied in their understanding of the third sector and how it operates, and they also need to allow for more diversity of provision in their processes, and for the specific financial requirements of the third sector in drawing up contracts. We also want them to involve the third sector in the planning of services as well as commissioning.

So what are we doing to promote and support the third sector in achieving a level playing field with other providers? We started eighteen months ago when, following consultation, we produced "Making Partnership Work for Patients, Carers and Service Users", the first exclusive agreement between the DH, NHS and Voluntary and Community Sector with the aim of strengthening partnerships, and improving the quality and range of service planning and provision of NHS-commissioned services. This is being followed up by some high-level initiatives designed to ensure that our ambitions to achieve closer collaborative partnership between the statutory sector and the third sector really happen:

• We have set up the Third Sector Commissioning Task Force to address the obstacles to a level playing field for Third Sector providers in terms of commissioning, procuring and contracting for health and social care services; and
• a National Strategic Partnership Forum, whose remit is to identify specific actions that will define and demonstrate the distinctive added value the third sector can provide, and encourage mutual understanding between the public and third sectors in health and social care, to inform and encourage culture change;
• we announced plans in the White Paper to establish a new fund by April 2007 to help those who want to use social entrepreneurship models to deliver services; and
• we are developing a community and engagement plan which will:
  • target key audiences with key messages about partnership with the third sector, and
  • disseminate the lessons and messages from the Third Sector Commissioning Task Force, and the outputs from the NSPF.

The third sector has the potential to become an integral partner in the delivery of health and social care services across the UK, and with these measures in place, we are ensuring it will achieve its full potential.