
The title of June's national children's commissioning and contracting conference - "Perfect Storm" - echoes messages from previous years' conferences and from the sector that children's commissioning is heading towards, or has already reached, a crisis-point. However, it is not always clear how things can be done differently, and the programme for this year's conference suggests that fundamental systems redesign based on cross-authority and cross-sector working is necessary to achieve this.
In many areas of children's services, particularly accommodation, current or "traditional" methods of commissioning and contracting are not working and can actively hamper efforts to achieve sufficiency. These methods are rarely grounded in strategic, outcome-focused commissioning and tend to result in volatile spot-purchase and off-contract arrangements. This in turn leads to a relationship with the provider market that is at best competitive and at its worst, confrontational. To remedy this situation, we must not only re-imagine sufficiency, but reconfigure the whole-service design landscape in which this duty is situated. If we are to do things differently, a shift in relationship between commissioners and the market is needed.
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