Title: Summative Evaluation of the Integrated Personal Commissioning Programme in the Context of Wider Policy Reforms to Promote Better Integrated Care and Support in England
Funder: Department of Health and Social Care

Abstract: Background Integrated Personal Commissioning (IPC) is an approach to joining up health and social care, and other services where appropriate. The purpose is to enable people, with help from carers and families, to combine the resources available to them in order to control their care. This is achieved through personalised care planning and personal budgets. IPC also aims to support people to develop the skills and confidence needed to self-manage their care in partnership with carers, the voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector, community capacity and peer support. Similar programmes such as individual budgets and personal health budgets have been shown to be cost-effective and to increase feelings of being control for some but not all groups of recipients. Aims in relation to the issue to be addressed The evaluation aims to identify key lessons for pursuing quality, effectiveness and efficiency in different models of IPC schemes in the future. It will assess whether, how and to what extent IPC can lead to better outcomes and quality of care, and is a cost-effective use of resources. This will be achieved through a scoping and feasibility stage to fully understand IPC models, and process, impact and economic evaluations to assess if and how IPC models are delivering five key shifts: integration around the individual; community capacity and peer support; person-centred planning, choice and control; and personalised commissioning and payment. Research plan and methods of investigation The project begins with a scoping stage encompassing a review of existing evidence and mapping of local delivery plans, followed by a feasibility stage to understand delivery models, user groups targeted, anticipated/actual numbers of IPC users, methods of measuring the counterfactual for the impact evaluation, and local data collection plans. These stages will feed into the development of a detailed research plan for the process, impact and economic evaluation. The process evaluation will include local area and in-depth thematic case studies to understand the delivery of IPC, commissioning and contracting issues, changes in the provider market and organisational and cultural change. The impact and economic evaluations will use validated outcome measures and locally collected resource use data to investigate the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of IPC.

Lay abstract: Integrated Personal Commissioning (IPC) is an approach to joining up health and social care, and other services where appropriate. The purpose is to enable people, with help from carers and families, to combine the resources available to them in order to control their care. This is achieved through personalised care planning and personal budgets. IPC also aims to support people to develop the skills and confidence needed to self-manage their care in partnership with carers, the voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector, community capacity and peer support. The evaluation aims to identify key lessons about the effectiveness of IPC schemes, in particular how far improved outcomes occurred and what were the key drivers of any change. It will also consider how far the changes that do occur represent value for money. The evidence will be gathered from across a number of local authority areas. In doing so it will cover different ways in which IPC has been delivered and a range of different user groups. The results will consider: what has been learned about how to introduce IPC approaches in different locations what benefits service users and carers gain through the new approach from developing and implementing a care plan the costs of developing the new approaches and any extra costs or savings associated with the plans developed how far IPC leads to demand for different kinds of care and support, and how the market responds.

Research activity codes: 8.1 ORGANISATION AND DELIVERY OF SERVICES
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE