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Reform Is Coming: What Commissioners Need to Know
2025 was a pivotal year for adult social care, marked by renewed political attention alongside sustained pressure on councils and the workforce. ADASS The launch of the Independent Commission on Adult Social Care, led by Baroness Casey, signaled a genuine appetite for long-term reform. Its first report is expected in 2026 and final report in 2028, with workforce challenges, sustainable funding, collaboration with providers, and harnessing technology likely to be among the central themes.
In 2026, ADASS is pressing for urgent, fully funded reform, ensuring councils are not left to absorb national policy costs without the resources to deliver them. That framing matters for commissioners: the sector is moving away from managing demand reactively, towards building systems that are resilient by design.
The ADASS roadmap signals a shift towards supporting independence at home, integrating health, housing and social care, and strengthening commissioning for long-term sustainability, moving from crisis-driven interventions towards early help and community-based care.
This requires commissioners to work across a wider ecosystem: not just directly commissioned services, but the VCSE sector, housing, and technology-enabled care. For directors of adult social services, the direction is clear, and councils that invest in the commissioning infrastructure to support it are already making progress.
A Shifting Landscape for Children's Services
Children's services commissioning faces a parallel, though distinct, set of pressures. Reforms delivered through the Families First programme are reshaping how local authorities and their partners deliver services, integrating early help and child in need support into a single, multidisciplinary Family Help model through to 2026.
From April 2026, the Family Help pathway comes into practice, and councils have until April 2027 to deliver the required workforce and cultural change. For local authorities thinking about what that means for their technology and systems, we have explored the implications in detail on LGC.
On SEND, the pace of change is significant. The government is currently consulting on proposals to reform the SEND system, with changes aimed at improving help and support for children and young people across the 0 to 25 age range. Local areas are now actively developing their Local Area SEND Reform Plans, spanning inclusive mainstream education, early intervention, workforce development, accountability and funding reform.
The commissioning implications are substantial. High-quality commissioning by local authorities is essential to ensuring the right placements are available in the right areas, yet the Competition and Markets Authority found that councils lacked the capacity to effectively forecast future demand and did not collaborate with neighbours to collectively assess how many placements were needed. Addressing that requires better data, stronger market oversight and more collaborative commissioning approaches.
Local authorities that secure approval for their local SEND reform plans will be eligible for High Needs Stability Grant funding, covering 90% of eligible high needs related Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) deficits. That financial incentive makes getting commissioning plans right a matter of real urgency.
Where the Right Tools Make the Difference
Commissioning teams across adults and children's services are under growing pressure to work in more integrated, data-driven ways while managing five to seven disconnected systems. The result is incomplete provider intelligence, missed early warning signals, and significant manual effort pulling data together.
The Access Group's Commissioning Evo Suite addresses this by bringing commissioning and care intelligence into one unified workspace, connected across the full commissioning cycle: analysis, planning, delivery and review. One login, one view, one commissioning experience. Within the suite, four tools do the heavy lifting for commissioning teams:
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Access Evo addresses this by bringing commissioning and care intelligence into one unified workspace, connected across the full commissioning cycle: analysis, planning, delivery and review. At the heart of that workspace sits the Commissioning Evo Suite, a connected set of tools designed specifically for local authority commissioning teams. One login, one view, one commissioning experience.
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Access Adam Commissioning anchors the cycle, supporting everything from needs analysis and strategy through to contract management and performance monitoring. For adult social care commissioners working to align with ADASS priorities and the emerging direction from the Baroness Casey Commission, that analytical foundation is essential.
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Provider Management Solution supports market shaping and oversight responsibilities across the full provider landscape. Developed with Directors of Social Services, it brings together dynamic data collection, quality assurance and risk profiling to give commissioners a clear picture of provider performance, capacity and financial stability. For adult social care teams managing market sustainability pressures, and children's services commissioners where placement sufficiency demands rigorous oversight, Provider Manager provides the intelligence to target support where it is needed.
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Care Management (CM) adds operational delivery insight to the picture. When connected through the Commissioning Evo Suite, commissioners gain real-time context on demand patterns and outcomes alongside their contract and quality data, rather than working from fragmented reports across separate systems.
Together, these tools give commissioning teams the 360-degree provider intelligence they need to move from reactive to proactive, and to make stronger, evidence-based decisions at every stage of the commissioning cycle.
Getting Ahead of the Reform Curve
The reform agenda across adults and children's services is creating real pressure on commissioning teams. Councils that invest in the right infrastructure now will be better placed to shape local systems, demonstrate value, and protect the services that residents depend on.
If your team is ready to explore what more connected, data-driven commissioning could look like in practice, we would love to show you. Get in touch with our team or book a product tour to see Access Evo in action.
