These publications explore aspects of commissioning in detail. If you have any questions or comments about these materials, please email us.

Good commissioning – principles and practice 

This document describes the sector’s view of good commissioning. It is designed to help leaders, commissioners, providers and the communities involved in children’s services to develop a shared understanding of commissioning and the essential components that make it work.  

Commissioning for looked after children   

This guide is designed for members, officers and providers who are familiar with commissioning. The commissioning standards laid out in this document are designed to enable the effective practice demonstrated in a number of local areas to be univerally applied accross the country.

Commissioning and the Big Society – the role of the community sector    

This publication has been written for commissioners.  It is a joint Commissioning Support Programme and Kindle publication exploring good practice in commissioning  community sector organisations.   

Commissioning and the community sector        

The Commissioning Support Programme and the Kindle partners have collaborated on this document which is aimed at community organisations to help them understand what commissioning is and how they can become “commissioning ready”. 

Commissioning for disabled children

This document explores effective practice and provides practical resources for commissioning for better outcomes for disabled children. It is intended for directors of children’s services, lead members for children’s services, strategic commissioners, children’s services managers and providers of services for children with disabilities and their families.

Improving children’s emotional well-being and mental health services

This Commissioning Support Programme published document explores effective practice and provides practical resources for commissioning more effective services for children’s emotional well-being and mental health.

Speech, language and communication needs tools

The following 6 documents comprise a suite of tools designed to explore ways of improving speech, language and communication outcomes for children and young people.

Tools for commissioning better outcomes: introduction

Introduction to a suite of tools designed to explore ways of improving commissioning for betterspeech, language and communication outcomes for children and young people.

Needs assessment

The purpose of this tool is to provide an explanation of needs assessment, how it fits into the commissioning process, and how it should be used to inform commissioning decisions.

Whole system mapping and design

This tool will be useful to people wanting to understand how the whole system needs to be changed in order to improve speech, language and communication outcomes, as well as those concerned to secure the optimal future for specialist services including speech and language therapy.

User involvement

This tool is designed to provide information and guidance to commissioners of speech, language and communication services when considering their approach to involving children, young people and their parents or carers. This tool outlines how commissioners can involve users at each stage in the commissioning process.

Workforce planning

This tool is aimed at all those with a responsibility for commissioning the children’s workforce. This includes commissioners of specialist services that support children and young people with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN), and those concerned with other workforce groups where SLCN competences may be required.

Evaluating outcomes

This tool seeks to provide commissioners with a clearer set of some of the key outcomes they need to focus on in the commissioning process and how these can be included in evaluation.

An introduction to system transformation for local government

Our introduction to Outcomes and Efficiency is based on learning from leading commissioners, directors and chief executives who are now radically transforming their local systems to make savings and improve outcomes for local communities.