Commissioning: Implications of divergence

In last month’s article we discussed evidence of diverging trends in the children’s social care sector – local authority commissioning arrangements appear to be fragmenting while the larger provider organisations continue to grow and consolidate the supply of provision.

With a Care Review pending, the state of commissioning and supply in children’s services has been suggested as an area that should be within the remit of the review. The implications for commissioners and providers arising from the divergence needs analysis and further research. Some of the impact is however already evident.

Purchasing power

At a simple macro-economic level as commissioners disaggregate their combined purchasing power, they also begin to lose the ability to influence and shape the supply side of the sector. Whereas historically when a significant number of councils came together to commission (for example, West Midlands, North West Placements, Pan London) the perception of providers was predominantly that they needed to engage positively with commissioning efforts of those large groups. There is now increasing evidence that providers are opting out of engagement with the newer and smaller commissioning groups.