Commissioning functions have expanded rapidly in recent times as public bodies get to grips with the growing financial crisis. I believe, however, that commissioners have been landed with an unrealisable proposition - outsource the effects of austerity through the marketisation of public services.
For markets to work efficiently, there has to be a significant number of buyers and sellers engaged in a commercial dialogue.
In the public sector, children's services in particular, no such market dynamic exists and therefore attempts at service transformation funnelled through a purchaser/provider nexus is bound to fail. Huge sums of public money are tied up in the transactional costs of tendering which inflates overheads, but is not evidently delivering transformational change.
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