These pages are about commissioning in Adult Services. They tell you about our approach, our strategies and our commissioning action plan that we update to meet the needs of the people of Newcastle.
Adult Services buys many different social care and preventative services from a wide range of voluntary sector and private organisations. The process of deciding what types of services are needed, purchasing them, managing their contracts and monitoring their performance to ensure both quality and value for money is called Commissioning. Through our commissioning activity we aim to continuously improve the availability, affordability and quality of local services.
Adult Services Commissioning Unit manages a wide range of services from drug and / or alcohol treatment services, needle exchanges, short term homeless hostels and other ‘preventative’ services through to long term social care services such as services providing independent supported living for people with learning disabilities, homecare and residential and nursing care for older people.
The Commissioning Unit will also be responsible for commissioning Public Health services from 1 April 2013.
In addition to this the Commissioning Unit also contains the Customer Relations Team which manages and, when appropriate, investigates care and support related complaints in Adult and Culture Services and monitors the progress of social care and support related investigations carried out elsewhere in the Directorate.
The Commissioning Unit also manages the Freedom of Information process for Adult Services.
One of the Council’s key commitments is the development of the Newcastle Future Needs Assessment (NFNA), the NFNA will provide an integrated, coherent and evidence-based means of partners working together to determine priorities for the City. It will be informed by key datasets, statistics and analysis; by the experience of practitioners in Newcastle and elsewhere; and by the direct input of people in the city via the Let’s Talk Newcastle initiative and other engagement channels. This information will help us to develop and improve services to meet the needs of Newcastle’s residents.
Monitoring Officers within the Commissioning Unit carry out annual visits to ensure that organisations are providing quality services which meet the needs of Newcastle residents, and to agree and support the delivery of improvement plans. Monitoring allows the Council to hold providers to account for the impact and effectiveness of services and enables us to develop open relationships with providers to enable us to identify, and address, problems at the earliest opportunity. There are a variety of tools which are used to monitor services, dependent upon the service type: Monitoring toolkit
Supporting People is the government’s long term policy to enable local authorities to plan, commission and provide housing-related support services that help vulnerable people to live independently. In Newcastle, Supporting People is managed by a partnership between Newcastle City Council, the Probation Service for Northumbria and North of Tyne Primary Care Trust. The partnership commissions services for people of all ages and with a wide range of different support needs, to help them live independently in the community. Visit the Supporting People website.
All of our actions require partnership working, whether with providers, other commissioners, strategic partners or Council colleagues. A significant number have some capital funding or site implications, and for these projects it is important that we work together with our colleagues in Environment and Regeneration.
To make sure that Adult Services' revenue investment is connected to Environment and Regeneration's capital programme, we have developed a Capital and Revenue Alignment Register (CRAR). Relevant actions from our Commissioning Action Plan also appear on the CRAR, which has been agreed by the Council as our shared priority list for capital development. More information about the CRAR.
Telecare refers to a range of modern services and equipment which can be used to help people to be independent in their own homes such as personal alarms, devices that assist people with memory problems and equipment which can send an alert if there is a problem and ensure a speedy response. If you are aged 85 or over you may be able to receive these services for free. You can find out more on the Your Homes Newcastle website.
This booklet (pdf, 3.37MB) tells you about the providers which have obtained Kite Mark standards.
Page last updated: 9 May, 2013
