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• About the joint planning and commissioning process
• Children and Young People's Plan
• Children's Trusts
• Commercial and procurement skills
• Commissioning framework for children and young people
• Examples of local commissioning and market development
• Improvement support for LAs and Children's Trusts
• Joint funding arrangements
• Joint Planning and Commissioning Easy Monte Carlo Tool
• Joint planning and commissioning: Effective practice case studies
• Joint planning and commissioning: Research
• Joint planning and commissioning: The framework in action: A Brighton and Hove case study
• Learning From Experience: Schools commissioning by LAs
• Managers and leaders
• Parenting Implementation Project (PIP)
• Play-equipment procurement framework
• Targeted youth support (TYS): Additional resources

Commissioning

Commissioning is the overall process for deciding how to use the total resources available for children, young people and their families in order to improve outcomes in the most efficient, equitable and sustainable way. Commissioning is required to deliver all services for children and young people and so good commissioning is central to delivering better services and improving outcomes.

Effective commissioning by Children’s Trust partners requires two elements:

• Process: a cyclical set of steps / phases / stages that Children’s Trust partners go through; from identifying needs, through to mapping services, investment, monitoring and review.
• Behaviours: the way in which partners move through these steps / phases / stages of commissioning.

There are various different models of commissioning that bring together the process and the behaviours. We do not advocate any specific model, though any commissioning process will incorporate the following basic stages:

• Understand – the local needs, resources and priorities and agree what the desired end product is. Commissioners should harness the views of service users (children, young people and their families) so that services can be configured most appropriately to address those needs within available resources.
• Plan – map out and consider different ways in which the desired outcomes can be achieved effectively, efficiently, equitably and in a sustainable way. This way the most appropriate provision can be commissioned regardless of who delivers it. Providers should be involved at this stage to add their expertise to the discussion.
• Do – make investment based on the appropriate action identified in the ‘plan’ stage to secure delivery of the desired service(s). This may be in full partnership or informal co-operation with individual partners undertaking activities which are aligned within the agreed plan.
• Review – monitor service delivery against expected outcomes and hold providers to account.

Championing needs

Good commissioning involves championing the needs of children and young people. Children’s Trust partners should be passionate about driving towards better outcomes for children and young people, but entirely dispassionate about where the best provision should come from. They should hold providers to account to ensure that children and young people’s needs are being met.

The Children’s Plan recognised the importance of good commissioning and that, whilst there was evidence of some good practice, there was also evidence of substantial challenges to ensuring consistently good quality local commissioning. The Children’s Plan therefore committed the Department to develop a programme to improve commissioning practice which  has led to the Department of Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) and Department of Health (DH) setting up the Commissioning Support Programme (CSP) to help Children’s Trusts develop their capacity and capability to commission the full range of children’s services.

For more information on the Commissioning Support Programme (CSP), please visit the CSP website.

Useful links

The CSP has published Achieving Better Outcomes: Commissioning in Children's Services which looks at the sector’s view of good commissioning.

Children’s Trust partners are responsible for commissioning services for children and young people. For more information, and to find out how the partners in each area work together, go to the Improvement support for LAs and Children’s Trusts page.

Healthy Lives, Brighter Futures, the child health strategy, presents the Government’s vision for children and young people’s health and well-being. Securing better health for children and young people through world class commissioning: A guide to support delivery of Healthy lives, brighter futures was published alongside the strategy and is available from the DH website.

DH’s world class commissioning programme

The Centre for Excellence and Outcomes (C4EO) is gathering and disseminating evidence of what works in delivering services for children and young people to support commissioners and delivery partners. It is planned that local authorities will take responsibility for commissioning of 16-19 education and training subject to the passage of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning (ASCL) Bill. For more information, go to National Commissioning Framework on the DCSF website,  and for information on commissioning services for 14-19 years olds, go to the 14-19 Reform section.

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Last updated on 26/11/2009