Planning and developing services for individuals, particularly around hospital re-provision. The teams were usually involved throughout the process, from planning their future services to supporting them through the move back to the community and beyond.
L earning disability services have been at the forefront of attempts to develop effective joint working between health and local authority agencies. There is now an emergent framework for commissioners to work together and some, albeit patchy, experience of doing so. Joint commissioning has demonstrated potential benefits for service users, though there is still considerable scope for widening the range of stakeholders and more firmly establishing it in the host organisations.
This article is based on a review of reported studies of joint commissioning in practice, which are surprisingly few in number. It concludes that there is little solid evidence that the process leads to benefits for service users, but there is evidence of its resulting in improved inter‐agency working. A second article in a subsequent issue of this journal will go on to consider whether the new partnership flexibilities offer the potential to learn from this evidence.
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