Commissioning

Last month saw the launch of a major joint review into the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector’s contribution to health and wellbeing. The review will consider whether partnerships between government and the sector are operating in the most effective way possible and how they might work better in future.

Every quarter, the Cabinet Office and Compact Voice hold a ‘cross department Compact meeting’. The most recent meeting sparked some new ideas and keen debate, which I hope will benefit partnerships between not only departments and the organisations they commission – but at a more local level too. 

In this guest blog, Leonie McCarthy, Chief Executive Officer of Peterborough Council for Voluntary Service (CVS), talks about some of the issues considered when refreshing the Peterborough Compact, and how it is intended that the new agreement will help voluntary organisations and commissioners to work together.

Before joining the Compact Voice team, I worked for a number of different health charities – focussing on campaigns work, trying to tackle problems with access to treatment, rights for disabled people, and local differences in the provision of both health and social care.

Moving from such specific policy topics to the much broader subject areas that the Compact covers was a challenge, and one it took me a while to get used to.

Payment by results is becoming an increasingly common way of funding public services.  The coalition government has moved decisively toward a payment by results (PbR) model in several contracts and has indicated that this approach is likely to grow in the coming years.

In this blog, I'll outline what PbR is, how it relates to the Compact and some of the challenges and opportunities it presents for voluntary and community organisations.