Overview
From housing, to health, social care or criminal justice, third sector organisations provide an increasing number of public services. Working with policy makers and practitioners to identify key priorities, this work will cut across a number of research streams and cover a series of key issues, including:
- Service commissioning and procurement
- Impact assessment (including economic analysis approaches)
- Third sector partnerships for service delivery
- Trends in the third sector workforce
- Implications of the personalisation agenda for TSOs
- User and community co-production
- Learning and innovation in TS service providers
- Sustainability of TSOs as service providers
- Specific sectors – including health, housing, criminal justice, environment, employment services
This workstream will draw upon the work of other TSRC workstreams, including Theory and Policy, Social Enterprise and the Real Time longitudinal case studies.
Critical understanding service delivery by the third sector is important to policy making as the third sector now provides a major - and very different - option for public services, which may be more responsive to the needs of citizens and service users. At the same time, there are dangers inherent in the third sector becoming over-dependent on funding from service contracts – particularly in terms of a potential loss of its independence.
The centre’s research will help to inform the debate on the way in which service delivery is developing, the potential role of the third sector in commissioning as well as contracting, and the implications of different approaches to service delivery on the overall impact of the third sector.
Key questions
- What is the current role of the third sector in service delivery and how is this changing?
- What is the potential for this role to grow and to change in the future?
- What are the implications of these developments in service delivery by the third sector, both for public policy and for the third sector itself?
- What is the impact of the recession on service delivery by the third sector?
Current work
We are currently preparing a scoping paper which will set out our proposals for the research agenda of the Service Delivery stream. In particular, it seeks to:
- Identify the key issues in the research agenda for service delivery by TSOs
- Highlight the current research evidence available on these key issues
- Identify research gaps around the key service delivery issues, which our future research programme might address
Next steps
The scoping paper will be discussed with the Service Delivery Reference Group in October. Thereafter, we will keep the research agenda up to date through a regular series of interviews with relevant national, regional and local stakeholders; conference attendance and presentations; and interactive sections in our newsletters and on our website.
Research contacts
Tony Bovaird – research lead
Pete Alcock
Helen Dickinson
Fergus Lyon
Steve McKay
Rob McMillan
Dave Mulllins
Simon Teasdale