Commissioning Care: Special Report

Recommendations in the Care Review aim to improve co-ordination and management in the care market while driving down costs for councils, but some believe the proposals do not go far enough.

The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care final report sets out major reforms for how local authority fostering and residential child care services should be commissioned in the future.

Drawing on research it commissioned over the past year, the review recommends creating new regional bodies to manage the commissioning of children’s social care services in an effort to strengthen local authority’s purchasing power.

The review’s author Josh MacAlister says moving to a regional approach should improve the co-ordination and management of the care market, reduce the costs to councils of care packages and tackle the dominance of large providers who have seen profits rise significantly in recent years.

While widely welcomed, some in the sector say the proposals do not go far enough – many large providers operate on a national basis – and won’t sufficiently strengthen the hand of councils. They wanted the review to go further and recommend moving to a national system for care commissioning.

Private foster care and children’s home providers, which account for the vast majority of placements, question many of the criticisms of the independent sector in the review, saying they deliver high-quality care for some of the most vulnerable children generally at competitive rates.

CYP Now’s Special Report on Commissioning Care outlines the key measures in the Care Review, hears from experts across the sector on the impact these could have on services, summarises latest influential research and highlights examples of good commissioning practice involving councils and providers.