The shifting focus of commissioning will require commissioners to develop a whole new range of skills:
- developing ways of identifying with children, young people, carers and other stakeholders the most pervasive obstacles people face in a given locality to achieving independence, choice, control and reaching their potential
- understanding how these obstacles interact with one another to compound disadvantage
- identifying and refining the most innovative and effective ways of overcoming or circumventing these obstacles
- generating capacity-building models at individual, family and neighbourhood levels
- improving models for complementing a person’s inner strengths and support networks with service interventions and responses
- enhancing models for protecting children and adults in vulnerable situations and managing risk without constraining opportunity
- forging new ways of engaging with other commissioning agencies and with the political process to make a reality of this more all-encompassing approach to commissioning
- establishing and using a variety of information systems to keep pace with fast-changing opportunities and options (from Making Ends Meet)