This report is intended to be used as a guide for commissioners and others to better understand how to implement the ethical commissioning and procurement principles, support improvement of commissioning practice at local level, and highlight ongoing solutions for the future.
About the project
The Iriss Ethical Commissioning Programme ran a project to identify current and future support and development needs of local authority commissioners on implementing ethical commissioning and procurement. The outcomes for the project were:
- Commissioners have increased knowledge, skills and confidence in their commissioning practice.
- The Scottish Government Adult Social Care Ethical Commissioning team and partners have a clearer sense of commissioning as a distinct profession and the skills and knowledge required to commission ethically.
- Scottish Government and partners have a foundation on which to build future more formalised training in partnership with larger training focussed organisations.
From August 2024 to January 2025 Iriss ran an Action Learning Set group for 15 local authority commissioners and procurement leads. The group provided a space for learning, development and support with the move to ethical commissioning, the opportunity to share practice examples from local areas and to hear from expert speakers.
The Ethical Commissioning Support for Commissioners report highlights the key issues and learning from the group sessions with commissioners on the following topics:
- Collaborative Commissioning and Redesign of Support
- Ethical Procurement and Outcomes Based Contracts
- Outcomes Based Commissioning and Contract Monitoring
- Full Involvement of People with Lived Experience and Self Directed Support
- Financial Sustainability
The report includes questions to support those working to improve commissioning, procurement and contracting practice which we hope will be useful for commissioners, procurement leads, contract managers and others. We also hope that this resource will complement and build on other resources that already exist, and the more formal guidance being developed on ethical commissioning and procurement policy and practice.
We have tried to demonstrate the value and importance of the role of commissioners (and procurement leads) to the social care sector and the complexity and skills required with implementing and leading whole systems change, as well as the importance of focussing on collaboration with providers and supported people.
