Commissioning covers the activities and processes used by people who make decisions about how best to use public resources to improve children’s lives. There are different models of commissioning, but it is essentially a generic process. Strategic commissioning consists of the same key stages. These take commissioners from understanding the needs of children and young people to ensuring that services meet those needs and produce the best outcomes.

The basic stages in the commissioning process can be summarised as:

• Understand – understand needs, resources and priorities and agree outcomes
• Plan – map and plan sustainable and diverse services to deliver outcomes
• Do – procure and develop services based on the plan
• Review – monitor service delivery of outcomes and take remedial action if necessary.

These steps form a cycle that is repeated on an ongoing basis so that service provision is continually refined and the best outcomes are achieved.

Strategic commissioning can be thought of as service planning plus contestability. It is more than just procurement. This is because commissioners are not restricted to purchasing existing services (whether from in-house or external providers), but can work with providers over the long term to refine current services or develop new ones.