ESN organised this seminar in November 2008 to look specifically at the commissioning approach. Commissioning is the process, led by a municipality, of designing and putting in place a range of services to meet the needs of older people in a given area. It presupposes that a municipality or another public authority has the main competence for organising older people’s services.

The seminar began with a review of the broader context to recall the drivers of change in social services and the regulatory models that have developed from this modernisation (Kai Leichsenring).

The first set of presentations covered the involvement of service users in strategic planning (Pascal Goulfier, France), the accreditation of independent care providers (Pirkko Pakkala, Finland) and the inspection of municipalities’ social services departments (Alexis Jay, Scotland).

Members then explored country case studies from Spain (Ana Bunuel), Poland (Wieslawa Kacperek) and the Netherlands (Hanneke Bakker) to see how municipalities establish contracts for service delivery with independent care providers, how these procedures might support improvements in service delivery and how municipalities can manage the local social care market.

Delegates’ reflections on the day:

Kai Leichsenring: “What I will take home from this seminar is that commissioning for quality has to be about the strategic approach.”

Steve Wilds, Member of ESN working group on long-term care: “For me, it’s all about civic leadership by the local authority which takes its responsibility for delivering quality services seriously.”

Liz Mestheneos, Vice-President of Hellas 50+: “Gathering reliable data seems to me to be fundamental: how can you even begin to plan services strategically to meet older people’s needs and preferences without having the right data? It’s a real challenge in many countries.”