Adult Social Care and Health Commissioning and Contracts

The Joint Commissioning Team (JCT) is responsible for commissioning health and social care services on behalf of Milton Keynes Council and NHS Milton Keynes Clinical Commissioning Group for adults, children and young people. The Contracts’ Team is responsible for procurement, contracting and monitoring of contracts.

The JCT has a key role in the drafting the local Joint Strategic Needs Assessment which it uses as the basis for service planning. It commissions a wide range of services from the independent, voluntary and statutory sector based on a market position statement which aims to help providers identify opportunities to develop services in partnership with the Council.

Information about providers that we currently have a contract with including local Care Homes, Domiciliary Care and Supported Living can be found in the Adult Social Care and Health Directory. 

The role of contract monitoring is to ensure that good safe services are delivered. This includes:
- Providing support to the tendering and procurement process
- Providing effective contract monitoring of contracted services
- Supporting providers to improve service delivery
- Ensuring that registered providers are compliant contractually and with regulatory services

The team uses a Contract Monitoring Framework which consists of:
-The Quarterly Monitoring Workbook. Consists of both standard and service specific performance indicators (agreed by the Provider and JCT).
- Contract Monitoring Meetings.  These will take place at least annually, but may be more frequent depending on the size and type of service.
- Outcomes Monitoring. Providers are required to submit data to the JCT. 
- Quality Monitoring Visits.  The visit has three stages:

  1. Stage One: Information Gathering. Looks at documentation - including policies, management systems and financial information.
  2. Stage Two: The Quality Monitoring Visit.  JCT staff will observe the service and talk with service users and staff about the quality of service.
  3. Stage Three: The Report, Scorecard and Action Plan.  JCT staff assess their findings, write a report, calculate a RAG (RED,AMBER,GREEN) rating and develop an improvement action plan for the service. Please note, if a service has a RED rating in Safeguarding, Complaints and Incidents, then the service will automatically receive an overall RED rating. 

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