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New forms of commissioning
As we have discussed, we are starting to see some places move beyond direct payments and to identify additional means for giving people the chance to get exible support, without unnecessary burdens:
Micro-enterprise – Supporting the desire of local entrepreneurs to develop micro- enterprise is doubly developmental for local communities. It keeps people who need support connected to their communities and develops talent and leadership that remains rooted in those communities.
Individual Service Funds – Supporting the desire of support organisations to use ISFs does not just enable people to get better support, it also grows the capacity of organisations to become assets to their communities and to help avoid institutionalisation and crisis (Duffy, 2013).
To end we would like to suggest that lying behind these challenges is a more profound question about commissioning itself. Arguably, part of the reason that we have struggled to transfer power and control to citizens, communities and community organisations is that we are still locked into a managerial approach to public services, which assumes that effective rational decisions can be made by bodies that situate power at a signi cant distance from the action.
An alternative approach, which the RSA and The Staff College call New Public Governance sees the role of the state very differently (Buddery, Pars eld, & Sha que, 2016). New Public Governance is not about the state giving up its concern for the welfare of all, but instead the state needs to recognise that its role needs to be sophisticated and enabling. Here we want to make just three suggestions for approaches which could be transformative for commissioners:
Community sourcing – treating the community as a vital resource which must be supported, not undermined by decision-making
Place-based work – getting decisions even closer to local neighbourhoods Modernised infrastructure – using the internet to make it easy and cheap to
individualise funding and widen support options.
These three strategies offer new forms of commissioning that could radically improve choice for citizens and the quality of our communities.
Beyond Direct Payments
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