Empowering local communities to commission for health and wellbeing: the connected care initiative in England

Abstract The connected care pilot in Hartlepool has been commended in government documents for its potential to 'put people in control' and, thereby, enable them 'to shape improvements in provision and contribute to greater fairness in service use'. This article focuses on the development by that pilot of a 'model' for community commissioning which residents were centrally involved in designing and operationalizing. It aims to describe how far and in what ways community members helped to shape those processes so that the pilot 's implications for promoting community commissioning can be identified and consolidated.