Response to the National Assembly for Wales’ Children and Young People Committee’s call for evidence on proposed advocacy services for children and young people

1. Purpose of the document

This document is the National Public Health Service for Wales (NPHS) response to the questions posed in the call for evidence by the National Assembly for Wales’ Children and Young People Committee to inform its short inquiry into advocacy services for children and young people in Wales.

2. How should advocacy services be commissioned to ensure a level of independence while providing flexibility and responsiveness?

Please see answer to question 2.3. The NPHS would suggest further consideration is given to options other than the new advocacy services being commissioned through collaboration between Children and Young People’s Partnerships.

An alternative which the NPHS suggests should be explored would be for local advocacy services to be commissioned by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for Wales but provided by local service providers. This could ensure independence at the same time as local service flexibility and responsiveness.

3. Response to the original consultation?

The NPHS did not respond to the original consultation

4. Adequacy of proposed local and regional commissioning process for advocacy services?

The NPHS welcomes the clear definition of commissioning in the original Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) consultation document and the accompanying diagrammatic representation out of the commissioning cycle.

The NPHS would question whether Children and Young People’s Partnerships (CYPPs) have as yet demonstrated that they can perform an effective commissioning function.

There is little evidence to date that CYPPs have effectively commissioned service developments to meet the standards set out in the WAG National Service Framework for Children, Young People and Maternity Services in Wales (the NSF). In the case of the NSF, CYPPs have been assisted to carry out the first stages of the commissioning cycle by the NSF setting out what services need to be provided, and the Self Assessment Audit Tool (SAAT) providing data to inform the gap analysis and the review stages.

The difficulties encountered in setting up Regional Commissioning arrangements between the Local Health Boards (LHBs), which are single organisations with a clear commissioning responsibility, have demonstrated that it is very difficult to develop collaborative commissioning arrangements. Given the lack of evidence that individual CYPPs are effectively performing a commissioning function, adding the complexities of joint commissiong to the process increases the risk that CYPPs will not be able to effectively commission the proposed new advocacy services for children and young people