It's important but it's not the most exciting material.
Management speak? Yes, plenty of that. The significance of it is that while individual services may have taken a commissioning role over the past decade, the process now has to adapt to a joined-up world and the emergence of children's trusts. Just as front-end delivery to young people is supposed to be more seamless, this has to be backed up by strategic planning and commissioning.
And how should you go about that?
The first step is needs assessment - so there has to be comprehensive data collection across a local area, with the data capable of being broken down by ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, disability, risk of criminality and so on. Much of this will be being collected already, but will need to be brought together. A baseline will be created for use in comparison with similar districts and to spot trends. Analysing the data will inform priorities.
Then what? Combine all this with qualitative information that captures the views of young people and families themselves. Young people "should enjoy active participation at an increasing number of decision points".
The NYA's Hear by Right and advice on participation from bodies including The Children's Society and Children's Right Alliance for England is recommended.
And once you've got this information? Gain the agreement of senior officers and political leaders and create a single joint commissioning unit to plan a pattern of service designed to secure priority outcomes. This will involve a mapping exercise to show what is being commissioned, what needs to be commissioned differently and what needs to be decommissioned. This must recognise and account for the knock-on effects and interdependencies between policies.
Will it just be the usual suspects that get commissioned? This guidance requires a "market development strategy" that encourages innovation and a diversity of providers.
So while there must be competitive tendering, the market must have easy access for new providers and low barriers to chuck out poorly performing providers. Measures should be taken such as: seed funding and capacity building for smaller providers; flexible, long-term and "non-combative" contracts; and funding based on understanding of costs. Providers should also be brought into the planning of commissioning.
Couldn't that lead to a conflict of interest? Which is why partnership working will need to be transparent and "Chinese walls" (procedures to limit communication between those with vested interests) will need to be established.
FACT BOX
- According to the Government's joint commissioning framework, 10bn of children's, young people's and maternity services are commissioned every year
- The process described for encouraging best practice in joint commissioning is expected to take up to five years to implement
- The framework is based on the experience of 35 children's trust pathfinders and contributions from 150 experts from health, social care, education, Connexions, youth offending, police and voluntary and private providers
- Joint planning and commissioning framework for children, young people and maternity services can be found on www.everychildmatters.gov.uk.
