The Director General of the Office of the Third Sector announced the second phase of the National Programme for Third Sector Commissioning at the ACEVO Recession Summit on 11th June 2009. Following a procurement exercise, a contract has been awarded to IDeA – the Improvement and Development Agency for Local Government – for Phase 2 which will run until March 2011.
The programme developed by IDeA builds on the success of Phase 1, with major components being delivered by a wide range of public and third sector delivery partners who are all specialists in their different fields, including; CIPFA (Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy), The Institute of Voluntary Action Research (IVAR), the NHS Institute for Improvement and Innovation; London Councils, ACEVO, Bassac, NAVCA, Social Enterprise Coalition and SROI UK.
The programme aims to improve the contribution of the third sector to public service design and delivery by developing smarter and more effective processes and practices around commissioning, and to support the development of key skills and capacity of third sector organisations to help them meet this challenge. Key developments for Phase 2 include;
* joint training for commissioners and third sector bidders;
* more service specific and joint-commissioning training in the key areas of; health and social care, education, training and employment, offender management and criminal justice;
* support for use of evaluation tools that measure the achievement of social value; and
* commissioning for services in untried markets, e.g. personalised services, direct payments and support for user-led organisations.
Full details of the new programme will be available from the IDeA websitehttp://www.idea.gov.uk/ from autumn 2009.
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/third_sector/news/news_
stories/090717_commissioning.aspx
