About Time

Commissioning to transform day and vocational services

About Time sets out how day and vocational services can make radical changes to offer people the support they need to build the lives they want to live. It is based on experience in two counties in England.

About Time is the first step-by-step guide that shows how primary care trusts and county council commissioners can turn their services around by finding out what their users want, drawing on the available evidence of what works and building new forms of support. It shows that involving service users from the start of a process of radical change is crucial to its success.

It is a must for all commissioners.

You can download a summary of About Time below.

Download About Time summary

These tools are for use with the About Time guide. There are blank copies of the resources in Appendix 1 of the guide with a spreadsheet to help you compare investment and population:

Download the resources from the book (216 KB)

Download the spreadsheet for comparing investment and population (20 KB)

We have prepared re-usable versions of the resources from the guide as well as four additional resources:

Download data collection checklist (109 KB)

Download community links service specification (133 KB)

Download vocational service specification (149 KB)

Download sample communication action plan (132 KB)

Key Performance Indicators for employment services

We are developing a set of key performance indicators for evidence-based employment services in partnership with several other organisations. They will be based on information gathered by local services.

The results will be published and launched later in 2008. You can find out more about KPIs here.