Guide to decommissioning and service reconfiguration in adult social care
Report | November 2010
This paper is a guide to the reconfiguration of services based on published good practice and brief telephone interviews with commissioning managers nationally. It describes the four key stages of service reconfiguration, and offers a checklist on the key activities needed to ensure the process is carried out as effectively as possible.
There is an outline of national drivers for reconfiguration, such as the current drive for efficiency saving and the potential impact of the personalisation agenda; there is also a specific discussion of the market in Yorkshire and the Humber. Decommissioning is then defined, and general principles for how to go about it are offered. The four stages to decommissioning - prepare, decide, do and review are explored in detail, and guidance for key elements in each stage is set out.
The report concludes that while the process of ending or changing a social care service is highly likely to cause disruption, it should be possible to achieve a successful outcome if resources are devoted to proper planning and preparation, and then to ensuring the decommissioning process itself is carried out methodically and sensitively. There are three appendices - the decommissioning checklist, a decommissioning flowchart and a bibliography.
For further information please contact Juliet Bligh at IPC
Email: ipc@brookes.ac.uk
Tel: 01225 484088