Commissioning Children's Services

By Frances Coupe
Head of Partnership Commissioning
CSF, Herts County Council

I was at an event recently when someone asked me “ why is everyone talking about commissioning?” and it made me think about how far we have come in recent years in terms of developing commissioning and raising awareness about what effective commissioning really is. In the olden times we simply talked about contracts – purchasing services and products and focussing very much on the contracting part of the process. I don’t think many people were very interested in what we did. The team that I now sit within – the Strategic commissioning team – used to be the Contracts Unit and I guess we did what it said on the tin.

Then came Every Child Matters, Children’s Trust arrangements and a much greater focus on outcomes rather than inputs and outputs. Commissioning is not simply about spending money, it’s about making real investment in services that will bring about long term change in our communities.

To achieve the outcomes required, we have had to get much better at needs analysis, using up to date data to shape services and listening to children, young people and their families to ensure we put public funding where it can have the greatest impact. This often means challenging the way things have been done in the past, trying out new and innovative approaches, and putting the needs of children at the heart of our planning process. It’s the commissioning bit that gets us there.

In my role, I lead on the development of commissioning with the voluntary and community sector (VCS) and the Primary Care Trusts (PCT’s). Most recently this has involved developing the Prevention 513 funding process and commissioning Phase 3 children’s centres. I work closely with the PCT to develop joint monitoring and funding arrangements where possible.

I also work with colleagues across CSF to support them with their commissioning of services ranging from parenting, childcare provision, healthy eating programmes and counselling services. My work has a real focus on preventative services and it is encouraging to see so many VCS providers represented within our commissioned services. In recent years the funding that CSF has committed to the VCS has increased (now approx £5M) and at a Children Matter East event this week this trend in our commissioning was highlighted. I think this is a result of our close working partnership with the VCS and recognition that the VCS are pioneers in preventative services and their application forms and tenders reflect this. In the Prevention 513 process 62% of overall funding went to the VCS – this is a 20% increase from the Children’s Fund (P513’s predecessor). Similarly in the Phase 3 children’s centres commissioning process 63% of lead agencies commissioned are VCS organisations (compared to 20% from Phase2). I think promoting Compact principles has also helped achieve these outcomes – we endeavour to ensure a 12 week application window, hold Briefings and workshops to explain the commissioning process, and ensure tendering and application opportunities are advertised as widely as possible. We also ensure we have VCS representatives on the assessment panels and this has brought huge benefits to the overall assessment process. Our work does seem to be paying off and I believe that children and young people are the real winners here.

This month sees the launch of the Compact Commissioning Guidance, and I have to say its pretty spot on in describing what commissioning is and how Compact can make it a better experience for the voluntary and community sector. So if you have a few minutes to spare take a look at it at http://www.thecompact.org.uk/


Finally another part of my job is chairing the recently formed HCTP VCS Strategy Group – this is a very positive forum where VCS reps and statutory sector reps are working together to take forward key areas such as communication, commissioning, training and development for the VCS. Regular updates about this group appear in Children’s Partnership News, the HCTP news letter.

So I enjoy my job, despite its many challenges. I work in a team that is passionate about improving outcomes for children and young people and I think that is reflected in our day to day work. If I could change two things it would be:

Making it easier to monitor preventative work – we are getting better at this and are thinking creatively about how we can demonstrate the long term impact of preventative services but there needs to be a huge cultural shift at a national level to make a real difference
I would like to get out more and meet the children and young people whose services I help commission- there’s some really good work going on in children’s participation and we aim to involve children and young people much more in our future commissioning processes


Can I also use this blog to blatantly advertise the launch of the next round of the Children’s Targeted Services Fund? This is CSF’s discretionary fund for the VCS and details can be found at www.hertsdirect.org/funding. The fund will be launched on 16th March.