Competitive tendering in social care is a failed system which can be replaced with something more human.
Author: Tim Keilty
Apologies for the Trumpian capitals. Competitive tendering is slightly better now that there is a fixed hourly rate - in the past, we sold people to the LOWEST bidder. Organisations outsource 'tenders' to professional tender writers, so the best bid writers win - not necessarily the organisation that would be the best fit for the person. I don't think people themselves or their families have any clue about the process or who 'wins'.
In the current system, nobody wins.
PING A new opportunity has arrived on the portal CLICK HERE to express your interest CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE DOCUMENTS - you read the pen picture, perhaps a support plan (if you are lucky) and then it is 'BULLSHIT BINGO TIME' not writing about the truth of what you will actually do, just writing what you think they want to hear, and you probably won't do. Ooh look! They need someone to empty the bins in Dorset, and someone to fix the potholes in Skegness, I might go for that while I'm at it.
The Pen Pictures have improved slightly over the years; they are a little less grim, slightly more based on who the person is in terms of gifts and interests - not always the case though, some of them don't SELL people in a good light. I rarely do the 'tender' thing, but I recently submitted a tender, my first in two years. As a small act of rebellion, I wrote it in the way that I would ideally like to support a person, I didn't use any jargon or describe any fancy 'models' of support, it was based on person-centred planning, rights and citizenship, I was open and honest about what I think our failings as an organisation are, and what we are planning to do to tackle them.
It scored 32/100. It might, of course, have been a crap submission. This person received an Individual Service Fund, but obviously isn't in control of it, particularly the question of who supports me? bit.
We quite often get people approaching us for support, because they have spoken to someone who has recommended us, or they've heard of us, or they've stumbled onto our website and are not put off by jargon - they are astounded to hear that they can't just come to us for support without someone else deciding - this is true even if they have a direct payment, I know it shouldn't be and I know it is against the law for that to be the case, but it is.
I'm sure the system knows who the 'greedy' providers are, the ones who make big profits and don't necessarily deliver what they say. This current system doesn't even weed them out; if they do a good enough job in BULLSHIT BINGO, they win again. I haven't got a problem with profit, I just know how tight it is currently and how difficult it is to make one, without cutting corners...but Procurement Law and a rigid adherence to it trumps everything else - including the rational judgement of smart commissioners who know their stuff and know their patch.
Competitive tendering has broken the system, squashed creativity, turned everything into a transaction where lives are bought and sold, it wastes time, pokes its nose into areas where it doesn't belong, it has broken the third sector, ruined local solutions, decimated advocacy (particularly self-advocacy), and has lost a lot of connection to its local roots.
It also 'mystifies' support, regardless of how fancy people's models are, how eloquent their tender writers are, how profit-making or 'worthy' the organisation is - if you need support and the person in your front room sees and treats you as an equal, is prepared to stand alongside you and figure stuff out - your life will be canny I reckon. This awful process dehumanises everyone involved, for something that rises or falls on the quality of the human relationships within it, stripping the human connection out at the start. It has turned everything into the only competition that nobody wins - it isn't even a boring nil - nil draw. And here's the hard bit.
Nobody says anything because they don't want to rock the boat.
4 years ago, we were asked if we could support a woman out of an Assessment and Treatment Unit in Darlington. The request came from a Social Worker who has been around for a long time. She asked us because we had supported a woman in a similar situation a few years previously, and we hadn't given up. I think we were also asked because we would have been honest if we didn't think we were up to the job.
We were introduced to the woman before she moved, giving her and us time to figure out if we liked each other. We were able to plan in detail, we involved everyone in it, led by her, creating a vivid picture of what life could be like and the details of what we all needed to do to get there. We visited regularly, didn't ask for any payment or 'transition hours’.
We built massive trust over a year, helped her find (in partnership with the Social Worker) a place to call home, and built a team of staff with her, who are largely still in place, apart from the ones she didn't want! 3 years later, she is still there, her longest stint out of the hospital, living a lush life, contributing massively to the world around her. We were treated as a key and trusted part of the process, not an afterthought to be tendered out later. If she had been 'up for sale' on the portal, we might not have 'gone for it' because the pen picture might have put us off.
Recently, a local authority was looking for another provider to support 3 people who shared a house - the ask was to write two sides of A4 for the people and families to choose a couple of organisations to interview. Not a bad shout, in my experience, people and families have much better bullshit detectors.
I don't think the framework of providers is necessarily a bad idea i.e. here are some providers we have checked to make sure they are OK and understand what's expected. There's got to be a better way of helping people choose from that list - what is their own personal criteria they'd like to score people against? They might have a particular view about wanting a national provider, or they might like an organisation that is not for profit, or they might want an organisation that does particular things beyond what is expected. People and families might also want something that isn't currently on offer and could work in partnership with an organisation to create it.
At the moment, we are stuck with choosing from what is available, not exploring what is possible.
I do have a look at the portal from time to time. Generally, we look at the pen picture to see if we like the person, and if they sound like our kind of person. Could we do a good job? If so, we have a look at the other documents.
Some people for sale and the solution are, on paper, a recipe for disaster. This is an exaggeration but a bit true, for example: Here are 3 completely incompatible people, S, M and R - here are their specific needs, they have 1 member of staff. M needs 2:1 support to go to the toilet, so here's an extra 45mins to make that happen. S can't walk unaided and needs constant supervision whilst 'accessing the community,' she gets distressed if she can't get out for a walk twice a day - she also gets distressed if she has to share her walk with anyone else. R, her housemate, plays the bagpipes and the trombone, hates going out and needs constant supervision whilst at home. S and M dislike loud noises, and S has a pathological hatred of the swirl of the bagpipes…In no more than 500 words, in Arial font 12 or above, please tell us...WTF. Be creative, FFS.
I think Simon Duffy described commissioning as 'Buying things on people's behalf that they probably wouldn't choose themselves' and I think that's true. It isn't even a true market. You can only innovate if the council will allow people to buy it, and the current 'products' are prescribed to the suppliers, and that's what they have to deliver – they are forced to compete for what they have been told to do, so they dress it up in some BULLSHIT to make them stand out!
Here's another thing: they put a horrific Pen Picture of someone whom the system has repeatedly failed. The person sounds so awful and scary, and their position so complicated and impossible to make better, that nobody joins the auction, and then that is described as provider failure. Or somebody does go for it, knows it is going to be a disaster, on paper that's the only thing it can be - it all goes belly up, and then that's a failure also.
The publisher is Citizen Network. Love me Tender or Love for Sale © Tim Keilty 2026.
community, Neighbourhood Care, Person-Centred Planning, Personalised Support, Self-Directed Support, social care, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Article
