Social research services

Tender description

Scottish Government and Skills Development Scotland wish to commission an evaluation of transitional employability services in Scotland — Work First Scotland and Work Able Scotland. SG and SDS wish to commission an evaluation of transitional employability services in Scotland — Work First Scotland and Work Able Scotland The evaluation will cover both the service delivery process (including performance management activity by SG and SDS) and customer outcomes. This will require a mixed methods approach involving, as a minimum: o A full process evaluation of the service delivery model across 4 regional areas and 7 different lead service providers. This would include as a minimum, 1 focus group with frontline provider staff from each lead provider, feedback from supply chain providers, as well as stakeholder interviews/workshops with SG, SDS and other partners. o a 2 phase customer telephone survey (achieving a minimum of 650-700 responses in total across both programmes in each phase). Phase 1 in field Oct/Nov 2017 and phase 2 Oct/Nov 2018 as a follow-up o flexibility to provide fully accessible face to face interviews where required to meet individual customers' accessibility needs for participation in the survey o in-depth longitudinal qualitative case studies to follow individual customer journeys o feedback from a sample of employers given the complex nature of the mixed-methods approach and the scale of the survey responses required, we would encourage and welcome collaborative bids from a consortium of suppliers to ensure that all elements of the requirement can be adequately met we anticipate awarding bids early Sept (at latest) and the contract would run until March 2019 — with the majority of the fieldwork delivered in the first 9 months of the contract. Expected outputs would be in the form of 2 reports: an interim report in Feb/March 2018 covering the process review and Phase 1 survey and a final report in early 2019 covering the customer journey work, phase 2 survey, employer feedback and a final overview of findings. The outputs will be used to inform the mobilisation and evaluation activity for Fair Start Scotland, for which a separate evaluation will be commissioned later in 2018.