Thursday, 19 February 2009

I spent another day on the telephone and drafting a report for the PCT. Once you have re-assured people that you are not selling anything and just want their views, it is astonishing how easy it is to have very intimate conversations with complete strangers. People can be so welcoming - and startlingly frank.

In the evening, Jackie and I went to our local folk dancing club – a great evening’s fun slightly soured by news that one of our fellow dancers was having treatment for cancer.

After this, I stayed up ‘til the wee small hours catching up on so many outstandking bits of correspondence.

One disappointment I had today was the guidance on commissioning issued by the Compact Commission. The gudiance does emphasise that there are four stages to commissioning: analysis, planning, sourcing, and monitoring/review. Statutory agencies typically see only two paths to commissioning. On the one hand, there is contracting: proper, grown-up, modern, mainstream processes through which the statutory sector establishes the agenda and then sets private and voluntary sector agencies at each other’s throats for the right to do the statutory sector’s bidding. What a power trip - everything is transparent and safe and clear and no-one has to think too much about anything because the process justifies itself.

On the other hand, there are grants: old, unfashionable, a blunt instrument (they cannot easily be purchaser-led but priorities rather arise through open dialogue), and they can produce just so many disparate and unpredicted outcomes. And yet grant programmes empower the voluntary sector and move whole communities and they are so essential to a healthy community.

Contracting and grants are both forms of commissioning. And the Compact Commission’s new guidelines gloss over the value of grant arrangements: poor show.