The Achieving Better Outcomes: Commissioning Development Programme is a suite of training materials designed to help all stakeholders in children’s services better understand commissioning. The training materials expand the 18 modules of the Achieving Better Outcomes: Commissioning in Children’s Services document. They take the form of a set of eighteen modular power-point presentations, and each one is linked to one of these eighteen components of effective commissioning.

The programme aims 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. We have grouped these components, and the eighteen modules, into the following sections:

A – Governance and frameworks

B – Commissioning activity

C – Capacity and competencies

Download instructions for the training materials here.

Downloadable materials for the Commissioning Development Programme

Below you can download the eighteen modules individually or as three separate ZIP files containing the materials grouped into each of the three sections above.

Download ZIP files

Section A - Governance and frameworks

Section B - Commissioning activity

Section C - Capacity and competencies 

Download individual modules

0 - Introduction to commissioning 

Governance and frameworks

A1 The commissioning process

A2 Commissioning principles

A3 Strategies and plans

A4 Relationships between levels of commissioning

A5 Governance 

Commissioning activity

B1 Mechanisms

B2 Optimising resources

B3 Whole system design

B4 Targeting

B5 Data and intelligence

B6 Performance management 

Capacity and competencies

C1 Making it happen

C2 Base decisions on outcomes

C3 Leadership

C4 Innovation

C5 Managing change

C6 Culture

C7 Senior Commitment

These materials will be regularly updated in response to your experiences of using the materials to deliver local development programmes. You are therefore invited to join an online group to give feedback and discuss the modules. We will be revising the modules based on your views, so please join the group.