Maximising Procurement Expertise and Achieving Savings

In 2003/4 Essex County Council were facing pressure on their budget, with £4.27 million extra being needed for children's services. This resulted from the cost of specialist social care and special educational needs services.

In the same year there was also a requirement for local authorities to shift their resources from specialist services to increase delivery of early intervention and preventative services in line with the Every Child Matters agenda. In response to this challenge the local authority instigated a review of children's services.

A number of work streams were set up to look at:

• Commissioning and procurement
  
  
• Redesigning services and assessments
  
  
• Early intervention and prevention
  
  
• Information sharing
  
  
• Change management and communication
  
  
• Integration of the children's service review into the wider Every Child Matters: Change for Children programme.

The children's services review was a structured programme of work which encompassed all aspects of the service. In total it resulted in savings of £2.2m. The savings enabled Essex to release money for investment in prevention and early intervention services. £1.4m was invested in developing local, internal fostering and residential services.

The commissioning and procurement work stream was responsible for identifying potential areas to achieve efficiencies. It developed and implemented a new approach to procurement in order to address the overspend.

The actions undertaken by the project team, which are described in this case study, successfully reduced the cost of externally purchased specialist services for children and young people in care and the provision of agency social work staff.

Click to read further case studies on joint planning and commissioning.