Scarborough-based Independent Care Group to work with North Yorkshire Council to improve care

The Independent Care Group (ICG) has won a three-year contract to be the Market Representative Body (MRB), representing all adult social care providers across North Yorkshire.

A new Executive Committee will oversee the work of the MRB and will include representative voices from across the sector.

Through collaborative agreements with Carers Plus Yorkshire and Community First Yorkshire the ICG is now also working with the unpaid carer segment of the market, as well as community, voluntary and social enterprises, cementing existing good working relationships in a memorandum of understanding with those partners. The bodies will work together to try to ensure a consistent and high quality level of care is delivered. ICG Chief Executive John Pattinson said: “We are delighted to sign this agreement with North Yorkshire Council to work together with the authority to deliver the best of care to people who need and rely upon that care in our communities.” As the Market Representative Body, the ICG will both act as a voice for social care providers to feed their views in to the authority and at the same time work with the authority and other social care commissioners to improve care. “I think this will put us into a unique position of working with both sides of the social care commissioning process – those who buy care services and those who provide them – for the overall benefit of the social care sector in North Yorkshire,” Mr Pattinson added. “Hopefully everyone will win, North Yorkshire Council as commissioners, social care providers across the county and, most of all, those who rely upon social care services in the area. “It is an exciting new chapter for us all.” Effectively the ICG will then have three distinct functions – to work with social care commissioners and unpaid carer bodies, to support its membership and to campaign and lobby at local, regional and national level.