Pressure from politicians to link Supporting People more closely with service outcomes is increasing, Community Care Live Scotland was told.

The programme was at "a crossroads", said Alisdair McIntosh, head of Supporting People for the Scottish executive, but he added that Scotland did not have to follow England by rethinking the scheme.

He told the conference in Edinburgh that outcome agreements for service providers could be a solution.

However, he said he was uncertain over how such an approach might be used with Supporting People, adding it was something to come back to.

He said cuts to the programme had caused significant problems and that the consultation on the programme's new funding formula "could have been handled better", but said it was now time to look forward.
McIntosh argued that the future of the programme depended on how far its impact could be demonstrated and said this was the focus of the department's current efforts.

He said there was a need for an evaluation of the programme, adding: "Delivering improved efficiency is crucial and the failure to demonstrate that or provide evidence will come back to haunt everyone in the next spending review."

Responding to a question about the unclear boundary between Supporting People and community care funding, he said there was a need to articulate clearly what the programme did.

Austen Smyth, chief executive of the Richmond Fellowship Scotland, said Supporting People needed a national needs assessment methodology and an agreed way of measuring outcomes.

Although originally expected this month, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's Supporting People strategy for England, which is also likely to affect Scotland, is now expected to be released in October.