“As a Baxendale client, CHCP CIC has had an extremely positive experience working in partnership to explore new territory. Robin and the team are consummate professionals and have demonstrated expertise throughout our most recent project. Always available for advice and to answer any queries regardless of the current pandemic, the team were accessible, friendly, flexible and adaptable and provided the information and intelligence required for our company to make informed decisions, particularly regarding actual financial risk of service delivery models” – Jackie Griffiths, Deputy Chief Operating Officer, CHCP CIC.

The client and their challenge

City Health Care Partnership CIC (CHCP) is an independent, social enterprise health services provider. They are an employee co-owned ‘for better profit’ organisation, investing profits into services, colleagues and the communities they work in. They provide over 50 diverse services in community settings, from health visiting to palliative care, school nursing to stroke services in Hull, the East Riding of Yorkshire, Knowsley, and St Helens.

CHCP commissioned Baxendale to support with designing and appraising a holistic supported housing service for Care Leavers. This stemmed from an ambition to do more beyond their existing health and wellbeing services and explore how they could enhance care, improve pathways and add value to the looked after children and care leaver cohort in Hull and East Riding.

Developing a Care Leaver service requires CHCP to gain knowledge and expertise in new areas. In addition, should CHCP choose to become a supported housing provider it would need to make a significant investment either through acquisition of an existing suitable property, or conversion of assets. None of this comes without risk, highlighting the importance of understanding the market dynamics, potential revenue sources, the competition and risks before further developing their growth strategy.

The solution and outcome

Baxendale developed a series of workstreams to be delivered in a phased approach to prompt a series of ‘go/no go’ checkpoints. It was designed this way to support the CHCP senior team to make informed decisions regarding development of the new service, based on the likely operating conditions, social impact and financial sustainability.

We first gathered national best practice examples of targeted Care Leaver support services to support CHCP to scope the service model that best complements its health and care delivery and ambition to generate meaningful social impact. We then performed market research and analysis to determine the need, demand and market for the service in Hull and East Riding. We analysed market trends and dynamics, assessed levels of competition, commissioning landscape and possible barriers and opportunities to enter the market. This indicated the most attractive options for CHCP to take the first step in developing the new service as well as identify what CHCP could achieve in terms of revenue.

With our support, a holistic service vision and granular operating model was designed to meet the needs of the commissioners and Care Leaver, drawing on CHCP’s breadth and depth of experience as a health and wellbeing provider.

Building on the operating model, we then developed an in-depth financial model, including growth scenarios to provide a commercial forecast aimed to evidence the viability of the commercial opportunity and its likelihood to generate revenues to warrant a return on investment.

At the time of writing, CHCP is engaging with commissioners to establish a roadmap for implementation of the new service.

If you are seeking support on developing your growth strategy and approach to commercial activity, please contact Robin Naudi – Head of Commercial and Digital, here: contact us.