A Market Position Statement also known as 'MPS' is information produced by local authorities to comply with our market shaping duties under the Care Act 2014. The content reflects the local authorities understanding of their existing markets.
Market Position Statement
Our Market Position Statement (MPS) reflects a summary of Essex County Council’s (ECC) current Social Care Market for 2022/23. The content of the MPS provides an overview of Adult Social Care’s current commissioning intentions, market pressures and ambition that support existing strategic objectives for Essex County Council.
Within the Market Position Statement there are several different markets that deliver different services or support to all Adults across Essex within the community or within a residential setting. It is acknowledged that each market has varying levels of complexities, including locality pressures, market demand, capacity, quality, and overall stability across Essex.
The Market Position Statement is directed at providers that support Essex residents. This content will share information or analysis on:
- Our Essex demography, population, trends, market spend and current market pressures
- Current benchmarking insight alongside other Local Authorities, market quality and financial forecast
- Our community based markets; short term and long-term services
- Residential based markets; short term, long-term and specialist
- Employability and housing insight
- The types of adults that require services
- Market enablers that provide different services alongside our existing markets
The information shared within the Market Position Statement is our baseline of insight to support the delivery of our Market Shaping Strategy for 2023 - 2030.
The content of the Market Position Statement will be updated every 6-12 months, dependant on any significant changes to existing markets. The data from each market will be updated every 6 months.
This information is for:
- Existing Providers working with Essex County Council
- New Providers who are looking for opportunities within Essex.
- Other businesses or organisations such as, Health, Community Health Providers, Voluntary or Community organisations working with Essex County Council.
The Care Act 2014 places duties on local authorities on Market Development within Adult Social Care. This is included in Section 5 of the Care Act and Sections 48-56.
Promoting diversity and quality in provision of services
The local authority must promote the efficient and effective operation of services for meeting care and support needs with a view to ensuring that any person in its area wishing to access services in the market
- has a variety of providers to choose from who (taken together) provide a variety of services;
- has a variety of high quality services to choose from;
- has sufficient information to make an informed decision about how to meet the needs in question.
Market Oversight
Regulations must specify criteria for determining whether (subject to regulations under subsection (4)) section 55 (financial sustainability assessment) applies to a registered care provider who is registered in respect of the carrying on of a regulated activity relating to the provision of social care for adults. In specifying the criteria, the Secretary of State must have regard to the following in particular:
- the amount of social care provided by a registered care provider,
- the geographical concentration of a registered care provider's business,
- the extent to which a registered care provider specialises in the provision of particular types of care.
Other areas of the Care Act include:
- Determining whether criteria apply to a care provider (Section 54)
- Assessment of financial sustainability of a care provider (Section 55)
- Informing local authorities where failure of a care provider is likely (Section 56)
In November 2021, the Adult Social Care White Paper set out a 10 year vision specifying three key objectives that support the Care Act statutory responsibilities. These were:
- People have choice, control and support to live independent lives.
- People can access outstanding quality and tailored care and support.
- People find Adult Social Care fair and accessible.
Government also set expectation that Health and Social Care will continue to work closely alongside our district and borough councils to support agendas to integrate housing and support, improve technology county wide and support our social care workforce to receive the right training and qualifications.