National Childrens Bureau

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National Centre for Excellence in Residential
Child Care (NCERCC)

• Desire - the link between intention and
  achievement Commissioning is a parenting and
  child care activity.  

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Desire as distinct from vision or motivation

• Vision - external, drawing onwards, imagination
  of the future
• Motivation - the need or reason to do something
• Desire - internal, seeking external communication
  and actualisation

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Premise

• Significant development - administration and
  financing of placements
• Insufficient discourse of parenting and child
  care thinking.
• Unintended consequences - inadvertently separated
  from the task of looking after children.
• By placing the child at the centre of what we do
  in our commissioning activity we keep the voice
  in the child central.

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Purpose

• Start discussion regarding the purpose and aims
  of commissioning in child care terms around the
  following question
• What is the definition of quality we are using in
  planning placements for children and is it
  related to the task of caring for /parenting them
  

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Safety, trust, dependency and relationships/enviro
nments for learning

• Understanding proceeds by a series of additive
  steps.. By changes of positionin the whole
  perspective from which things are viewed.
• Learning is promoted in environment of emotional
  safety/trust.
• For effective learning we need to feel safe,
  accepted, secure, able to explore, and to have an
  individual sense of identity.
• Dependence is a pre-condition for independence

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• Rogers - Personality as a process of becoming
• Maslow - Pyramid of needs
• Erikson - Ages and stages
• Winnicott - Potential space
• Bowlby
• Loving care leads on to confidence and
  cooperation
• Anxious children apprehensive, become
  reluctant, unwilling and anxiously obedient, and
  unconcerned about the troubles of others

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What is Commissioning?

• The process by which local authorities decide how
  to spend their money to get the best possible
  services for local people.

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Core Elements of Commissioning

• www.regionalcommissioning.com
• common values understanding needs/preferences
  map existing services vision how needs may be
  better met strategic framework for procuring
  bring together all data dialogue effective
  systems for service changes evidence-based
  approach evaluate for measurably better
  outcomes improving alignment

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Other terms used to describe commissioning but
which are not commissioning

• Procurement sourcing, selection, securing
  services.
• Purchasing buying services
• Contracting one specific part of the wider
  commissioning process the selection,
  negotiation and agreement with the provider of
  the exact legally binding terms on which the
  service is to be supplied.
• Commissioning the process of specifying,
  securing and monitoring services to meet
  individuals' needs

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• Compulsory competitive tendering (1980s)
• 3 Es - economy, efficiency, effectiveness
• Best value (2002)
• 4 Cs challenge, comparison, consultation and
  competition.
• Gershon report - HM Treasury - Releasing
  resources for the frontline Independent Review
  of Public Sector Efficiency
• Commissioners - best value for money - quality
  and price.
• 3 Es being described in terms of the 4 Cs.
• In Gershon terms commissioners are successful -
  primary task savings.

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National Occupational Standard for commissioners

• creating and maintaining effective working
  relationships
• identifying and responding to the needs
• promoting effective communication and information
  sharing
• But not required to have a knowledge of the
  Common Core
• Consequence - not equally appreciate needs of
  young people and provision
• Stability emotional/psychological or
  geographical/financial?
• Occupancy dynamic/relational or mathematical?
  85 or 100?

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Standards agenda, quality and care

• Measurable - but mechanistic? Away from
  caring/parenting?
• 5 types of approach to defining quality (Pfeffer
  and Coote)
• The Traditional Approach quality grade, 5 star
  better than BB.
• The Scientific/ Expert Approach - conformance to
  specification
• The Managerial. Excellence Approach
  satisfaction, excellence
• The Consumeristic Approach - satisfaction, price,
  gift offers
• The Democratic Approach - morally doing things
  right.

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• Other services - provider is doing something for
  the consumer
• Care services - provider is doing something for
  and to the consumer.
• A process of transformation - unique, negotiated

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What works in Residential Child Care

• Culture
• Theories for practice
• Clarity of purpose
• Leadership
• Relationships
• Relationships between children
• Relationships with family members
• Countering institutionalisation
• Therapeutic support
• Staff involvement

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8 Pillars of Parenting

• www.pillarsofparenting.co.uk
• Primary care and protection
• Secure attachments, making close relationships.
• Positive self-perception
• Emotional compliance
• Self management skills
• Resilience
• A sense of belonging
• Personal and social responsibilities with the
  help of others and developing personal views of
  fairness and reciprocity.

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• Watson 2003 Defining quality care for looked
  after children frontline workers perspectives
  on standards and all that? Child and family
  social work 2003, 8, pp 67-77.
• Standards about the task of enhancing quality
  in the life of children.
• If not they lead away from meeting need and
  towards meeting
• competencies, a displacement from task. Caring
  task is left undone
• So standards must not be too abstract,
  operational in daily life.
• 2 prerequisites for care are listening and
  communication.

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• What will enhance quality care?
• Consistency, teamwork, committed staff,
• Good environment
• Good manager
• Small units.
• What will restrict quality care?
• Lack of resources and this related mainly to
  money for activities.
• Lack of training leading to an inconsistency and
  lack of shared understanding of the task.

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Berridge and Brodie - 13 Quality-of-care
variables

• Quality of relationships between staff and young
  people
• Degree of staff involvement with young people
• Child-centred or institution-oriented
• Adequacy of educational environment
• Care for minority ethnic groups
• Young peoples involvement
• Control problems
• Staff morale
• Focus of staff concerns on narrow or wider issues
  
• Emphasis on family contact
• Community links
• Relationships with social workers
• Relationships with external professionals

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• Traditional organisational development processes
  focus on
• defining a problem
• seeking to fix it
• measure or assess whether the solution had
  actually worked
• Appreciative Enquiry processes focus on
• encourages people search for what already works
  well
• amplify this by focusing on positive throughout
  an organisation

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Relational commissioning commissioning as a
parenting and child care activity

• IDeA Debates and dilemmas
• The transition to joint planning and
  commissioning is a step change that requires
  clear leadership. Effective joint planning and
  commissioning necessitates new partnerships,
  redistribution of power strategic understanding
  of how all outcomes are met, and a more
  commercially minded approach to procurement all
  focused on the child and young person.

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Joint Planning and Commissioning Framework for
children, young people and families

• Commissioning is not just a technical activity
  that is about procurement and purchasing
  services. Rather it is a way of thinking and
  approaching services design and deliveryit
  requires a fundamental shift in thinking.

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Petrie and Wilson define relational commissioning
as

• A shared identity and common value system mutual
  dependence and trust risk-sharing a presumption
  of the incompleteness of the contract a
  commitment to managing contractual arrangements
  and to extensive communication.

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Relational contracting requires

• an appreciation that personal, professional and
  social values influence the nature and process of
  the working relationship
• the importance of building relationships over
  time, trust has to be established or anticipated
  - there has to be a history and a future.
• mutual trust is greater than individual
  self-interest

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4 connected features for effective contractual
relationships

• pivotal, respectful relationships between key
  senior staff members
• collaborative relationships at lower levels of
  staff
• success with difficult to meet needs cases
• mutual advantage

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Commissioning needs itself to be transformed and
requires

• shifting from product to learning
• developing explicit skills, attitudes, and
  abilities as well as knowledge
• developing appropriate assessment procedures
• rewarding transformative practice
• encouraging discussion of practice of both
  commissioner and provider
• providing transformative learning for all
  commissioners and providers
• fostering new collegiality
• linking quality improvement to learning
• auditing improvement.

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Defining quality (Harvey Green, 1993)

• The transformative view of quality is rooted in
  the notion of qualitative change, a fundamental
  change of form. Ice is transformed into water and
  eventually steam if it experiences an increase in
  temperature. While the increase in temperature
  can be measured the transformation involves a
  qualitative change. Ice has different qualities
  to that of steam or water. Transformation is not
  restricted to apparent or physical transformation
  but also includes cognitive transcendence.

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• National Centre for Excellence in Residential
  Child Care (NCERCC)
• National Childrens Bureau
• 8 Wakley Street
• London EC1V 7QE
• www.ncb.org.uk/ncercc
• E-mail jstanley_at_ ncb.org.uk
• Tel [phone] Fax [phone]

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