Effective join-up of commissioning arrangements and service offers is something of a holy grail in the public sector – much-praised and continuously sought, but difficult to describe and even harder to find. As local authorities look for ever more creative ways to balance the books, this kind of partnership working can offer one solution, but its key challenge lies in taking a step back from operational thinking – to provide the right service for the right child at the right time – to look at wider, more strategic and longer-term arrangements.
Chasing one’s tail (spend)
In my area, a recent analysis of “tailspend” – one-off or repeated purchases of under £10,000 – identified a range of individual therapeutic packages being commissioned; including counselling and psychotherapy, support services for young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and therapies for adopted children and their families funded by the Adoption Support Fund (ASF).
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