Black Friday offer!

Children’s commissioning course

Take advantage of our Black Friday discount! We’re offering a 15% reduction on the £900 teaching fee for the Children’s Commissioning Course in January – March 2026. Early applicants can secure their place at the special rate of £765.

Please note: this offer ends 19th December 2025 and applies to teaching fees only and does not include accreditation fees. 

If you’re interested in joining the course, we encourage you to apply early at:

ipc_courses@brookes.ac.uk

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Amy Harmsworth
Senior Consultant

Latest News

Guardrails and guidance: ensuring the safe use of AI in qualitative research 

This blog is the first from Transformation Partners in Health and Care (TPHC) and IPC. By combining TPHC’s NHS-facing transformation and analytics expertise with IPC’s academic rigour and leadership in research and evaluation, we’re exploring how emerging technology can be used.
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Safeguarding in the context of adoption and special guardianship – insights from the webinar

In January, over 160 professionals from across England and Wales attended one of our series of research and practice webinars, focused on safeguarding within adoptive and special guardianship families.
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New Publication – Independent Evaluation of the Ignite Pilot training programme

This report was produced by IPC, which independently evaluated the programme commissioned by the Department of Health and Social Care.
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Lead the Way: Consultant & Senior Consultant Opportunities at IPC

The Institute of Public Care is expanding, and we're looking for experienced consultants to lead our knowledge exchange projects.
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Join Our Team: Assistant Consultant Opportunity at IPC

The Institute of Public Care is growing, and we're looking for an enthusiastic Assistant Consultant to join our team.
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South-West Children’s Regional Sufficiency Strategy webinar

This free event is OPEN TO ALL and is aimed at Commissioners and strategic leads in Children’s Services with responsibility for Sufficiency of Children’s Services provision, primarily around children in care.
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February and March course spaces

We have a few remaining spaces on our Principles of Commissioning course February 2026 and Children's Care Purchasing and Brokerage course March 2026.
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South West Regional Sufficiency Strategy

New Publication. This Strategy provides an up-to-date regional picture of supply and demand of children’s placements to inform action to tackle challenges which are urgent and widely shared. It will be of interest to both commissioners and providers, as well as other regions developing collaborative approaches to address insufficiency.
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A New Kind of Commissioning for Challenging Times

IPC Associate John Bryant explores how commissioners can navigate today’s complex health and social care landscape by rethinking traditional approaches. He introduces a new framework for collaborative, values-driven commissioning that fosters trust, shared purpose and real impact across systems. John and IPC Senior Consultant Amy Harmsworth will be discussing their ideas at the next national Commissioners Conference 13th-14th November. See News page for booking details.
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An evaluation of ‘One Bexley Pathways’

Read about an innovative step to delegate statutory Care Act duties. IPC recently undertook an evaluation of ‘One Bexley Pathways’ – a consortium of voluntary sector organisations undertaking delegated Care Act responsibilities. Dr Melanie Henwood, Visiting Research Fellow with IPC, reflects on the main findings of the evaluation.
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Improving the response to child exploitation so that children are safer sooner

John Wilkinson, Associate Visiting Research Fellow at IPC, shares his reflections on an innovative partnership to co-design a better response to child exploitation risks and harms. This has produced ‘Our Place’, the winner for Children’s Services at this year’s LGC national awards.
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IPC to present at Oxford Brookes University CPD Healthcare day

IPC will be hosting a stand and presenting at this event to highlight our valuable CPD work and extend a warm welcome to attendees.
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"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

To receive our newsletter & gain access to our publications, please add your details below and select areas of interest. If you've done this before, you will see this prompt if you've deleted or don't collect browser cookies, or it's been more than a year since you've visited this page.

We will always store your personal details securely. We will never sell your contact details to another organisation and never share your data with other organisations for marketing purposes. You can opt-out at any time.

Subject Areas of Interest
Marketing Permissions
Please select all the ways you would like to hear from Institute of Public Care:

By submitting this form, you agree to be contacted in relation to News, Resources, and Updates. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. For information about our privacy practices, please view our Privacy Policy.

We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By clicking below to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy practices here.