Commissioning Snapshot: Looking at youth service commissioning across London

The aim of this report is to get a snapshot of commissioning practices for youth services in London boroughs. With changing budgets, priorities, and political contexts, many local authorities are develop new approaches to youth service delivery or exhibiting patterns in commissioning practice.

We hope that the information can be shared, and help inform local practitioners of the new models and ideas that are out there. We are focusing on the services for young people specifically, athough many wider issues such as housing and crime also impact on young people disproportionally more than other age groups. We will examine the priorities for young people in the capital and their role in shaping their services. At a local authority level, we will detail the priorities, patterns, and differences in youth service commissioning processes. Specifically, we will examine the role of leadership, the emerging practice around outcome frameworks and the new models of service provision.

We have spoken to 22 different local authorities, anonymised their contributions and used their quotes throughout this work. They are marked in bold and do not have an endnote contribution. This review presents an emerging regional picture of the current context for young people’s services, albeit incomplete.

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