27 February 2009
By Paul Dicken
Social care commissioners and providers in Wales have agreed common principles for meeting the challenges over the next ten years in a memorandum of understanding.
The document, Securing strong partnerships in care, states that ‘effective engagement between commissioners and service providers is essential to ensure that strategic plans take account of the independent sector’s ability to respond to the demand for services’.
Signed by the Welsh Local Government Association, the Association of Directors of Social Services Cymru, Care Forum Wales and care providers, the memorandum said that pressure on resources had led to an ‘increase in tensions between commissioners and service providers with regard to the fees paid for services’.
Stewart Greenwell, president of ADSS Cymru, said: ‘We have moved past the point of competition between the public and private sectors, to where we can work together successfully in the interests of people whose needs are changing and who need services that can change to meet those needs.’
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