Joint Commissioning
- Local Authorities and their health partners are required under the Children and Families Act 2014 to commission services jointly for children and young people with SEND, both those with and without EHC plan
- These arrangements could involve joint funding agreements or pooled budgets
- The joint commissioning arrangements must include arrangements for:
- Securing Education, Health and Care assessments
- Securing the education, health and care provision specified in EHC plans
- Agreeing personal budgets.
- LAs must provide information about the services that result from joint commissioning arrangements in their Local Offer
Local arrangements for joint commissioning for children and young people with SEN draw on:
- Corporate priorities as set out in 'Toward a Fairer Islington' and in Children's Services strategic plan
- Local needs identified by Health and Wellbeing Boards in their Joint Strategic Needs Assessments
- The agreed priorities of the Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy.
What does 'Joint Commissioning' mean?
- Joint commissioning is how key agencies (Education, Health and Care) agree to work together to deliver integrated support for children and young people with SEND.
- These services must jointly identify the outcomes that matter to the children and young people with SEND and to their families and then plan, deliver and monitor the services against how the outcomes are being achieved.
Decision making
- Parents and young people should be involved in joint commissioning arrangements.
- Some will be members of decision making groups, some will be involved in interviews for new contracts, others will be involved in reviews of services.
- Everyone can provide feedback on the content of the Local Offer which will help inform commissioning decisions.
Funding
- For some services, agencies will pool their funds to pay for them and others may be funded separately.
- But no matter how they are funded though, the overall plan will be jointly decided.
- Joint commissioners will resolve any disagreements about who funds what between themselves so that children, young people and their families are not adversely affected.
Accountability
- Services are accountable to commissioners for their impact on improving outcomes
- They are also accountable to the people they serve
- All commissioned services must set out clearly in the Local Offer what it is they provide, who has access to their service and how decisions are made.
Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA)
The purpose of JSNAs is to improve the health and wellbeing of the local community. The core aim is to develop local evidence-based priorities for commissioning which will improve the public’s health and reduce and reduce inequalities.
Joint Strategic Needs Assessments (JSNAs) are assessments of the current and future health and social care needs of the local community. These are needs that could be met by the LA, CCGs, or the NHS. They are unique to each local area. Local areas are free to undertake JSNAs in a way that best suits their local circumstances – there is no template or format that must be used and no mandatory data set to be included.
JSNAs aer set out in the form of evidence and analysis of needs, should be used to help determine what actions LAs, the local NHS and other partners need to take to meet health and social care needs, and to address the wider determinants that impact on health and wellbeing
View Islington's Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA), the JSNA SEND Factsheet and the JSNA Vulnerable Children Factsheet.
The Joint Commissioning Strategy translates the JSNA findings into clear outcomes to be achieved, leading to locally led initiatives that meet those outcomes. The priorities should flow from the needs identified.