West Midlands Children’s Commissioning Partnership

This is a multi agency group which has the following aims concerning children and young people in external placements

• To improve the quality and outcomes for young people
• To avoid duplication in contracting / pre-placement arrangements
• To develop a database which will be capable of mapping supply and demand and will enable placements to be made closer to a child’s home where appropriate
• To develop a robust regional dataset with information on placement costs, outcomes and gaps in provision
• To enable smarter ways of working by sharing exemplar tender specification and procurement processes
• To develop arrangements (where applicable) across sub-regions to use resources or trade placements
• To develop a partnership approach with providers to ‘share risk’ in developing alternatives
  to placements and to fill gaps in local provision

WMCCP is currently working with the West Midlands Centre of Excellence (WMCoE) on a project funded by WMCoE to assist in fulfilling some of the aims above.

WMCCP will support local commissioning strategies by providing regional information and enabling sub-regional arrangements to be developed where it would be inefficient for a single authority to commission a resource.

WMCCP is committed to working collaboratively with providers.