Commissioning
Development of appropriate commissioning infrastructures, skills and knowledge is a high priority across all services, however, commissioning developments within children's young peoples and maternity services holds particular significance in the delivery of the policy agenda.
Joint commissioning is a fundamental delivery mechanism for the children's agenda and can act as a lever for
- Integration of service delivery
- Pooling and aligning of budgets
- Needs analysis
- Move to preventative services
- Innovative practice
- Involvement of young people and parents in service development
- Involvement of the voluntary and independent sectors
- Development of joint standards, targets and principles
- Performance management to agreed quality standards
- Continuous improvement
Drivers already exist within the system, which will assist this process
- National child health mapping - will provide information in regard to current provision, gaps, financial spend, capital investment, staffing, training, environment and progress towards policy objectives, wider economy e.g. integration
- Policy objectives e.g. integration, prevention, involvement
- New joint processes in planning and inspection - Local Area Agreements (LAAs), Children and Young People's Plan's CYPP's, Joint Area Reviews (JARs) etc
- Multi-agency delivery - children's centres, extended services, local children's partnerships, etc
- Changes in health organisations separating commissioning and providing functions
- New infrastructures and organisational change - Patient led NHS, Children's Trusts, Directors of Children and Learners in Government Office, Directors of Children's Services in local authorities
- Outcomes focus
Definition of commissioning
"Commissioning is the process of specifying, securing and monitoring services to meet children's and young peoples needs at a strategic level. This applies to all services, whether they are provided by the Local Authority, NHS, other public agencies, or by the private and voluntary sectors" Audit Commission, Making Ends Meet (Oct 2003)
Levels of commissioning
There are a number of levels of commissioning as follows:
- - Individual (Direct payments)
- - Practice Based Commissioning
- - Cluster (e.g. schools commissioning as a cluster)
- - Locality
- - PCT
- - Regional
- - Group of regions (highly specialised services)
- - National
Services will be commissioned differently according to the type of service, needs of the user, the local, regional and national issues. Each area will need to use a variety of commissioning levels and will consequently need the infrastructures and governance frameworks to enable this to happen.
Use the links in the box on the left to access further information and resources.
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For further information about our programme of work in this area contact: Heather Miller