The Children’s Trust is a planning body that informs commissioning decisions and ensures, through a range of sometimes agency-specific approaches, that front line services work together to improve outcomes.

the role of the Children’s Trust Board is putting in place the five ‘essential features’ of the Children’s Trust:

• a child-centered, outcome-led vision for all children and young people, clearly informed by their views and those of their families
• inter-agency governance, with robust arrangements for inter-agency co-operation
• integrated strategy: joint planning and commissioning; pooled and aligned budgets;
• integrated processes: effective joint working sustained by a shared language and shared processes
• integrated front line delivery organised around the child, young person or family rather than professional or institutional boundaries.

As a strategic commissioning group, the Trust Board’s key roles and responsibilities will comprise:

·         taking a strategic view of needs (Joint Strategic Needs Assessment), linking needs to outcomes

• accessing high quality data and information systems
• performance management
• establishing overall commissioning standards and principles
• governance of service delivery and of commissioning at the different levels
• setting out the areas in which services can be more effectively commissioned at other levels and the processes for managing this delegation of commissioning functions
• establishing the correct systems and processes, including workforce development, aligning budgets
• market managing, especially in relation to ensuring contestability, choice and quality of providers, and working towards a ‘level playing field’
• looking at service redesign, especially encouraging the move towards preventative services and early intervention.