What is commissioning social care?
Commissioning in social care is the process where local authorities identify, purchase, and monitor social care services for people in their area.
It aims to meet the care needs of people and plays a significant role in ensuring vulnerable people receive the support they need to fulfil their lives, remain independent, and delay future care needs.
What is the commissioning cycle in social care?
Typically, the social care commissioning process in a local authority will follow a commissioning cycle, however it is important to note that there are other models available which can be used also.
The definition of the commissioning cycle in local government is the process of planning, analysing, and monitoring the care being delivered in their local area. Through using the same evaluative method the commissioning cycle in social care aims to improve the health outcomes of your local residents so they can a better quality of life.
Some other departments in local authorities may employ the same or similar commissioning cycles to commission other services alongside social care.
The NHS commissioning cycle for example helps to identify ways in which patients and the public can engage in their own care to make the patient’s choice the top priority.
With commissioning cycles being used across various departments and sectors it can be difficult to pinpoint what exactly one looks like in social care. By the end of this article you should be fully informed in what one looks like and what actions are needed at each stage of the cycle.
Why is the commissioning cycle in social care important?
There are many reasons why the commissioning cycle in social care is important. Not only does it help individuals receive the care they need, it also ensures that it is at the right level and that it is delivered at a high standard.
1. Quality Assurance
Through commissioning social care local authorities can set quality standards. These standards can then be monitored throughout the commissioning cycle to ensure that they are met safely and effectively to the care receiver.
This can reduce pressure on the NHS through delaying future care needs and potential hospital admissions by delivering a high quality continuity of care that is person-centred and mitigates risks.
2. Value for money
Equally commissioning in social care is important as it helps local authorities get a well rounded view of the social care market. Through commissioning social care, local authorities can identify and procure services that use their resources efficiently to deliver services at the best possible price.
This helps local authorities to stretch their budgets further to ensure that individuals will still receive the quality of care they need without wasting resources or it being massively over budget.
3. Builds partnerships and encourages integrated commissioning
Another reason why commissioning in social care is important is it encourages collaborative and integrated commissioning amongst other local authorities, providers, carers and service users to efficiently tailor services to meet the needs of their community.
Local authorities can therefore receive a better picture of the social care market and understand the resources that are readily available to meet different care needs quickly, safely, and efficiently.
Commissioning in social care is important therefore as it keeps the individual and the impact a service will have on them at the heart of every decision made. It is vital therefore to keep in mind what good commissioning looks like. ADASS defines good commissioning as:
- Well-focused e.g. through making care person-centred and concentrating on outcomes based commissioning
- Inclusive
- Well-led
- Promotes a sustainable and diverse market
What does the commissioning cycle in social care look like?
The commissioning cycle in social care is often similar to other commissioning cycles at first glance. The terminology of the stages in a commissioning cycle may vary and some councils may add in additional steps. However, there is often four main steps at the core of every local authority’s commissioning cycle. These include:
- Assessment
- Planning
- Contracting
- Monitoring
Other times the commissioning cycle stages can be referenced as:
- Analyse
- Plan
- Do
- Review
For each commissioning cycle stage to be successful the SCIE have explained what local authorities should consider and remember at every stage including:
- Developing a clearer understanding of the complex needs of their community including considering the whole needs of person from practical and medical, to social and emotional
- Identify which are the areas of poor performance
- Involve people who use services and unpaid carers at every stage of the commissioning process
- Improve your knowledge of the services that are already provided
- Adopt an outcomes-led approach
- Make sure services are continually assessed
- Encourage service providers to show how they will increase an individual’s independence
- Set high standards for monitoring
- Consider opportunities that will make care deliveries more sustainable
1. Assessment
The main objective of the assessment stage of the social care commissioning cycle is for local authorities to identify what the needs of your local population are.
This can be where local authorities will adopt a population health management approach so local authorities can gather health outcomes across a population in a specific area to assess their care needs.
Whether local authorities follow a population health approach or not, at this stage of the cycle local authorities will gather as much information as possible from relevant sources to understand the needs of a population.
Alongside assessing and understanding the care needs of their population, the assessment stage also involves analysing previous commissioning approaches, initiatives, and models to decide whether they are still relevant to your community’s needs, and if not how can they be changed or improved.
Other activities involved can also include:
- Clarifying commissioning territory
- Identifying other areas of the health and care system, third sector, housing or other partners that could help provide better outcomes for people
- Undertaking demand forecasting
- Identifying what resources are currently available
- Identifying what resources are needed
2. Planning
The planning stage of the commissioning cycles uses and takes the information collected from the assessment process to design ways in which those needs can be met best.
The planning stage will often start with a quick review of the key findings from the assessment to identify gaps and then establish how these can be filled. During the planning stage a more detailed review will often take place to decide what is needed, what is available, and what the supply and demand capacity currently looks like.
At this point for the planning stage to be successful it is vital that local authorities work and collaborate with other stakeholders and care providers to understand the full social care market.
Through doing this, it will often result in the production of a commissioning strategy that outlines what actions will be taken and why, as well as the targets to be achieved.
This is where the expected impacts upon service provision, the care market, and other areas like the purchasing process will also be highlighted.
During the planning process it is also recommended to consider:
- How pre-existing services will be re-configured or decommissioned
- Analysing the risks involved when implementing the changes you are planning
3. Contracting
The contracting step of the commissioning cycle is where independent providers and other organisations that can provide the services your local authority needs are founded, sourced, and assessed for their suitability, to then be finally selected to deliver the service.
Ultimately this stage helps to ensure that the services needed are available and are being developed as planned. Through this quality assurance criteria can be established and be included in all contracts to ensure your care providers meet the standards required.
At this stage other considerations have also been noted including how providers will be paid and by what method. However, due to changes in the way social care can be purchased such as through direct payments, many local authorities have renamed this stage in the cycle to ‘Do.’
4. Monitoring
The monitoring stage is where local authorities will assess the performance of providers, the authority itself, and its impacts, to analyse what targets have been achieved against the commissioning strategy put forward in the planning stage.
Historically, most social care services were commissioned on a unit basis, and this was typically done in bulk. For example, deliver this number of hours of care per week to this many people.
However, this way of monitoring outcomes is now very outdated. This is because it would heavily concentrate on value for money instead of putting the welfare, dignity, and quality of life of an individual at the centre of how care is commissioned.
It is for those reasons outcomes based commissioning has been increasingly encouraged and is now heavily seen as best practice.
During this stage it is also important to consider:
- Encompassing an ongoing review of the strategy itself e.g. are there any new legislations or are there any funding changes
- Reviewing root causes for performance problems e.g. are they linked or have they been caused by strategic miscalculations
- Developing systems which bring together relevant data on finance, activity and outcomes
- The effectiveness of service models across the market to respond to different needs when they change
- Putting in place processes to analyse service user, carer, and provider feedback
What are the current changes in the commissioning of social care?
Similar to the rest of the health and social care market it is heavily concentrated on integration. This is also true when it comes to the commissioning of services.
Joint commissioning concentrates on providing a process through which people with lived experience, communities and professionals, can be actively engaged in setting the overall priorities for an area.
This will help the commissioning cycle of social care further through encouraging local authorities to used strength-based approaches and concentrate on services that matter to the individual.
Previous publications from a number of thought leading organisations in health and social care are a good place to start to boost your knowledge of these commissioning changes:
Local Government Association; Integrated Commissioning for Better Outcomes,
Social Care Institute for excellence on Joint Commissioning
The King’s Fund on Integrated Commissioning
The commissioning cycle in local government - How can technology enable better commissioning of social care?
For a commissioning cycle to be effective and at its best it needs to be data rich. Digital tools and software enables this by improving communication, data collection, and analysis. This can help streamline the assessment process to improve accuracy and make more evidence enhanced decision making.
Digital tools can also help enhance collaborations with other stakeholders to streamline procurement processes further and aid evaluating your commissioning strategies to get the best outcomes.
To be able to invest in digital technology, local authorities need to be able to have access to reliable funding streams to help overcome the challenges facing the social care market and reach the increasing demand. In January 2024, the government announced an additional £500 million of social care funding.
This additional funding will offer great opportunities for local authorities to digitally transform their adult and children’s social care services to drive innovation and improve performance. This, in turn, will offer better data insights that will be centralised in one place to lead to better data-led commissioning decisions being made for your community.
Here our Access PAMMS technology, can help accurately forecast future demand with up to 99% accuracy. This helps ensure your local authority are best prepared to commission the right level of resources needed for each care need, as well help easily identify which services need re-configuring, decommissioning, and commissioning for the first time.
Through bringing together a range of intelligent data sources which highlight providers at various stages of risk. Our Risk Profiler tool can help your local authority keep a watchful eye over the provider market and easily adapt commissioning strategies to minimise service user disruption if a provider fails.
Digital tools can also help identify in real-time when care needs have changed to streamline payment processes to providers without any manual input needed.
Our Access Adam Care Commissioning platform increases your visibility to help allow trends to be spotted even earlier. Our commissioning software therefore is also well adapted to strategic commissioning techniques to allow local authorities to meet their national targets without limiting the quality of care that gets delivered.
Local government software therefore gives you the tools you need to gather and process the data into the meaningful information that you need to develop a well-established commissioning strategy that’s person-centred for the best outcomes.
Summarising the commissioning cycle in social care
In this article we have reviewed how commissioning and commissioning cycles work in social care. We have evaluated each of the four steps and the key actions that happen in each.
This article has also reviewed the impact technology can have on implementing your commissioning strategy more successfully to achieve your targets quicker, get better outcomes, and improve quality of life.
At the Access Group we offer a whole suite of tools to make commissioning more streamlined and even easier to ensure it is constantly person-centred.
For more information in how technology can transform the future of social care commissioning watch our social care commissioning webinar today.
Discover our local government software today, and contact us so we can help you assess your commissioning strategy straight away to be more outcomes and people focused to increase independence, reduce dependency on the NHS, and delay future care needs.