The original strategic commissioning options appraisal toolkit

The original toolkit

This project was designed and developed by the Public Service Transformation Academy for Care and Health Improvement Programme (CHIP), now referred to as Partners in Care and Health (PCH), which is jointly run by the Local Government Association and Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS). We encourage experimentation with these resources and welcome feedback at marketsandcommissioning@local.gov.uk.

This toolkit has been designed to help adult social care commissioners to think about the local conditions they are working with, to:

• Undertake a self-assessment of their strengths and areas for development
• Better understand the relevant factors at play that constrain and enable effective adult social care commissioning locally
• Apply the insight and key discussion points from the self-assessment to select a strategic commissioning approach that builds on local strengths and suits the place
• Apply the insight from this work to plan to deal with current commissioning challenges, undertaking action planning based on key constraining and enabling factors to support commissioning development, expanding commissioners’ room for manoeuvre, influence, and impact. Councils may choose to use this action planning to draft a separate Commissioning Development Plan
• Understand the implications of implementing the selected strategic commissioning approach and the challenges this may present
• Start to put the selected strategic commissioning approach into practice. Councils may choose to draft a separate Strategic Commissioning Plan to articulate how it will meet the strategic needs of the place, using the selected strategic commissioning approach.

Applying a strengths-based methodology to your strategic commissioning consists of a downloadable, multi-sheet, Excel self-assessment and development tool, with accompanying reading materials and this guide. The toolkit includes six steps and councils can choose to use as many of the steps as they wish. Some may use the self-assessment only; others may use all of the toolkit.

How the toolkit was developed

The development of this toolkit has been overseen by a steering group made of stakeholders from the LGA, ADASS, Care Provider Alliance and others. The developers have worked with councils and a wide range of contributors who have tested the materials operationally.

Resources in the original toolkit

The toolkit includes the following resources, which are all downloadable from the webpage:

• Self-assessment and Development tool – (Excel)
• About Applying a Strengths-Based Methodology to Your Strategic Commissioning (Word)
• Pre-reading – Introducing Commissioning Aspects 1 – 8 (Word – embedded in the spreadsheet)
• Pre-reading – Introducing and Implementing Strategic Commissioning Approaches 1 – 8 (Word – embedded in the spreadsheet)
• Additional reading (Links to other websites and documents)

Applying a strengths-based methodology to your strategic commissioning