Council and democracy

About joint commissioning

What is joint commissioning?
The idea of joint commissioning is to bring together what we have available to spend on health and social care, with the aim of then providing the best services possible for people with mental health problems or learning disabilities.

In Hertfordshire, more than £200m per year is spent on such services. The County Council and eight Primary Care Trusts therefore together contribute this money to a Joint Commissioning Partnership who then oversee how the money is spent, through a Joint Commissioning Team.

We currrently use the majority of this money to commission mental health and learning disability services from Hertfordshire Partnership Foundation Trust and from Adult Care Services. In addition we also commission services from other Health Trusts and from the private and voluntary sector.

What are the benefits of joint commissioning?
By pooling all these resources we can make sure that we join up all the work of health and social care organisations so that service users and carers experience their care as a single effective service.

We can make sure that we do not duplicate effort or waste money and we can make sure that any developments, improvements or changes happen effectively and smoothly.

We can choose whether to continue providing services through the current service providers or whether it would be better in future to provide services through different service providers.

What are the challenges for joint commissioning?
The needs of service users and carers are considerable and services require significant ongoing modernisation and improvement. To achieve this, joint commissioning needs to be able to make the best possible use of limited resources.

The range of partners and stakeholders involved is large and varied so communicating effectively and reaching consensus is not always straightforward.

Such a large scale arrangement can run the risk of the losing touch with local needs and with the needs of individual service users and carers. Joint commissioning must ensure that these needs and the needs of minority groups are recognised and addressed.