commissioners and providers having little choice but to cut funding and staff. Joe Lepper identifies 11 ways to save money - and maintain
quality services.
1. Talk to families
Often the best ideas for saving money and improving services emerge from talking to children and families, says Sarah Gillinson, managing partner of the Innovation Unit, a social enterprise that supports councils to make service improvements.
This ethos of consultation drove the Transforming Early Years project, which launched in 2010 and involved six councils working with the Innovation Unit and Nesta (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) to find ways of improving early years services while identifying savings.
"Instead of asking families how councils can improve services, we started from scratch and said: 'Tell us what your lives are like and what would help you and your children'," says Gillinson.
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