Welfare services for children and young people

Tender description

Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council (the purchaser) are looking to establish a contract to deliver Families First and Flying Start Programme within the borough of Merthyr Tydfil. The services will be delivered through 3 contracts: Contract 1 — Early Years Pathway: Lot 1 — Pre-School Support for Children with Additional Needs, Lot 2 — Family Support; Contract 2 — Key Working; Contract 3 — Integrated Therapeutic Counselling. Applications are encouraged from organisations who will work together to deliver multi agency collaborative projects across Merthyr Tydfil county borough. Organisations are allowed to submit collaborative bids to meet the specification. There is no limit on the number of organisations working together to make a submission. However it is recognised that in some cases single agency bits may be required. Provide a collaborative and coordinated service which supports children with Additional Needs or disability, aged 2 — 4 years old to access community based pre-school provision. The project will deliver of a minimum of 1 000 supported sessions a year within a setting. Each session will be between 2.5 and 3 hours. The following work will be delivered by the provider: — Each child will receive a minimum of 2 sessions per week for a 10 week block; — All referrals will be allocated through a multi-agency panel, which the provider will be a member of and ensure attendance; — The Provider will be required to co-ordinate and organise provision of one to one support for children to access pre-school if agreed as an assessed need by panel; — In exceptional circumstances and funding dependant, children could be placed up to 2 terms prior to school entry (being the term following their third birthday) and could therefore receive up to a maximum of 20 weeks. This must be agreed on a case by case basis. — Referrals will be considered by the Early Years multi-agency Enhanced Panel and actions for support agreed. Referrals can be made by Health Visitors, Portage, other health professional (e.g. Speech and language, hearing impaired, physiotherapists). — Visits with children and their families usually within the home will be undertaken and will be bespoke to individual families identified need and will be provided in a flexible way; — During the visit the Provider will assess the child's needs and discuss potential support requirements, however the panel will make the final decision; — The Provider will ensure that Early Years Practitioners providing enhanced support have the necessary skills, experience and training to offer a quality intervention to meet children's needs. This may involve signposting to specialist professionals and support to register on relevant training; — The Provider will liaise with Early Years providers to gather details of children with ALN (Early Years Action and Early Years Action Plus) to include on a central ALN Register that will be held by the Early Years Team; — Where appropriate, the Provider will facilitate the Team Around the Child meetings for children prior to their transition into school; — The Provider will promote the practice of One Page Profiles within Early Years Settings: — The Provider will work with Early Years Settings to ensure there are robust transition arrangements for children moving onto school; — Effective monitoring will be conducted to ensure that children's needs are being met within the setting and that progress is being made towards their agreed targets. The provider will work in partnership with the Local Authority and Health Board as guided by the principles of the Additional Learning Needs Transformation Programme. Personnel employed to work on the contract will be expected to hot desk for part of the working week from the Integrated Children's Centre, this will allow for further alignment and sharing of expertise in relation to the inclusion of early year's children in Flying Start and non-Flying Start areas. Provide a low level family support service to Flying Start eligible families. The project will support a minimum of 130 families through the delivery of a minimum of 800 face-to-face sessions a year through individual support and group work. The following work will be delivered by the provider: — Identify, engage and encourage families to participate in community based services; — Assist families to take up their entitlements and benefits; — Support families to address barriers to attending initial speech and language appointments; — Develop parent's skills and confidence to enable them to support the physical, emotional and educational development of their children so that the whole family can enjoy positive and meaningful lives; — Support transition arrangements for families across Flying Start entitlements — Support families to engage with local parenting programmes and peer support groups; — Support families to take up local speech and language programmes; — Provide information and guidance to families to empower families to support themselves independently, improve resilience and ability to cope; — Provide parents/ carers with an opportunity to have their voices heard; — Support families to develop skills around resilience, empowerment and sustainability through a graduate response and effective exit strategies; — Promote the Learning to Talk Key messages with parents; — Promote importance of attachment and the Grow Brain key messages; — Co-facilitate on parenting programmes as required; The successful organisation will need to demonstrate clearly how they intend to achieve the above support to families but it would be expected that they would be achieved via; one to one support and group based interventions, It is intended that the Flying Start Family Support element will work with families who have low level needs that can usually be addressed with a single service approach. The Flying Start Family Support element will work closely with the Multiple Intervention Assistance (MIA) model which is the Team Around the Family (TAF) approach and will provide the facility to step up and step down families where appropriate. Desks will be available for the purpose of this contract, within the co-located premises at Treharris and in the 3Gs building in the Gurnos. This will come at no cost to the Provider. The Provider will be required to provide all IT equipment and other relevant equipment for personnel employed to the contract. Success of the Flying Start Family Support interventions will be measured in the following ways: — % of parents that develop improved capacity and skills to contribute positively to their child's development, — Number of children who take up their childcare entitlement following involvement with Flying Start Family Support, — % of parents working with Flying Start Family Support who access parenting, health based or early language opportunities, — % of parents working with Flying Start Family Support reporting an improved access to wider services and opportunities, — % of families working with Flying Start Family Support identified as low resilience that move to medium/ high resilience (FRAIT), — % of families moving into employment and training opportunities, — % of families working with Flying Start Family Support identified as medium resilience that move to high resilience (FRAIT), — % of families taking part in consultation on their Flying Start experience, — Number of families supported to successfully access their statutory speech and language appointment. Provide a dedicated key working (as described in this contract) delivery service through the TAF/MIA model to: — Flying Start families (attributed to the Flying Start element), — Non Flying Start families, with children aged 0-18 (attributed to the Families First element including part of the ring-fenced disability allocation) up to the age of 25. The following work will be delivered by the provider: — Delivery of the agreed family assessment, action plan, risk and intensity tool and distance travelled tool, — Case management and coordination of other services around the family, acting as a single point of contact for a family, — Delivery of agreed key messages and interventions depending on the family needs, — Engagement support into identified services and to act as an advocate where appropriate, — Facilitation of Team Around the Family meetings (with the family and other projects/services/ professionals), — Adopting an approach which will Embed resilience, empowerment and sustainability for families through a graduate response and effective exit strategies, — Adherence to TAF/MIA processes, as well as being part of the review of the model. Provide an integrated therapeutic and confidential counselling service that will include: Attributed to Families First Funding: — Community Counselling to children and young people prioritising 5-10 and 20-25 year olds, — Attachment and Play Therapy to families, — Parent to Parent (or interparental conflict) Therapy. Attributed to Local Authority, Education funding: — Statutory School Counselling for 10-19 year olds.