CPD’s briefing note explores the main barriers to collaborative commissioning and ways of overcoming them to design services that truly meet community needs.
This briefing note was provided to the Productivity Commission’s inquiry into Delivering quality care more efficiently.
CPD’s briefing note Overcoming challenges in collaborative commissioning pinpoints the main barriers to adopting this approach, and explores ways to overcome them to design services that truly meet community needs.
Collaborative commissioning is the process of bringing together funders (government agencies) and service providers to collectively identify and respond to a population’s needs. This approach to commissioning social services promotes local autonomy and accountability, fosters coordination and cooperation between actors across sectors, and leverages partnership with communities to improve outcomes for people.
Collaborative commissioning approaches share some key elements:
Collaborative commissioning is held back by entrenched system dynamics, policies and mindsets of our political leadership, public services, care providers, and communities. The briefing note identifies three main barriers:
Successfully scaling collaborative commissioning and its key elements will require capability and culture change among the public service, service providers, and communities. Examples might include: