Case studies are drawn from across different Children’s Trusts to provide you with practical examples of how effective commissioning benefits children. The case studies reflect current good practice based on real situations and cover different service areas, geographical areas, levels of commissioning and types of problem.

Please contact us to suggest a case study for inclusion on this site.

Browse by theme

Click on one of the themes below to take you to a list of all case studies related to that theme.

 Schools                            Child Health

 CAMHS                             14-19

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You can use this discussion forum to rate and comment on documents in the resource bank as well as suggest documents to include. To do so, post a discussion with the name of the document and you can then rate and comment on it. We will review all feedback from this forum and consider whether documents should stay or be removed from the resource bank. Access the resource bank discussion forum.

All case studies:

• Exploring Commissioning in the Context of Selective Education (Lincolnshire) (28 KB)

  Focusing on commissioning in the context of a mixed selective and comprehensive education sector.

• Families at Risk, Social Exclusion Taskforce (577 KB)

  This report presents a background on families with multiple disadvantages.

• Evaluation of Adolescent Multi-Agency Support Service (AMASS) Islington (271 KB)

  Evaluation of Adolescent Multi-Agency Support Service (AMASS) Islington. The primary aims of AMASS are to support families to enable young people to remain at home or in foster placement, and to improve outcomes for young people.

• Narrowing the Gap. Final guidance year 1 (3.05 MB)

  The pack contains all the material produced during the first year of the Narrowing the Gap programme. It is set out carefully, with each section leading to the next, allowing readers to ‘drill down’ from a high level overview of the issues, through the evidence base to the detail of what we believe must be pursued across the whole system if we are to be successful in narrowing the gap.

• Getting a Better Deal - Assessing Unit Cost and Engaging with the Market (Blackpool) (251 KB)

  This case study shows how Blackpool engages with children’s residential suppliers, and the benefits of good analysis, market management, and negotiation.

• "You Learn More if You Listen More" - Gloucestershire County Council (461 KB)

  A newspaper article outlining how Gloucestershire effectively engaged with parents to help understand future demand and to plan for schools provision.

• Co-located Services Toolkit: Governance and legality issues for co-located service provision (59 KB)

  The very nature of the environment in which public service organisations operate requires each to work strictly within their respective statutory responsibilities, framework and powers. To do otherwise could be “ultra vires” although in any case good sense suggests clear governance structures will make operational models of service delivery more straightforward, less contentious and more easily understood by all stakeholders.

• Next Practice in System Leadership – The Hailsham Partnership (37 KB)

  Hailsham is a partnership of five schools, one secondary and four primaries. The secondary school, Hailsham Community College, was established some time ago as a full service extended school, and the Partnership has been working together to build on that experience to offer whole town provision of a range of services including education.

• Next Practice in System Leadership – The Harris Federation of Academies (43 KB)

  In 1990 Harris City Technology College (formerly Sylvan High School) in South London, became the first school to be sponsored by the then Philip now Lord Harris of Peckham. Since then Harris CTC transformed from a failing school to one routinely achieving 90%+ A* - C at GCSE and was described by Ofsted as “outstanding”. The Harris Federation was established to support collaborative working practices in order to replicate and further develop this success in an additional five schools.

• Next Practice in System Leadership – Extended services in North Hartlepool (ESINH) (32 KB)

  ESINH aims to tackle long-term challenges to educational achievement by building capacity for community leadership.

• Practice in System Leadership – Haven (33 KB)

  Haven is a partnership of three secondary schools serving an area of high unemployment and low participation in post-16 education. The Next Practice Project centers on the development of a vehicle for making a collaborative and coherent enhanced post-16 offer to the young people in the community.