Develop prototype tools to support a local approach to children’s safeguarding

Tender description

Summary of the work Development of prototype tools to enable social workers to take a local area based approach to children’s safeguarding. Expected Contract Length 6 months Latest start date Monday 7 May 2018 Budget Range £30-40,000 excluding VAT Why the Work is Being Done Hackney Council has received funding from the Department for Education to take a contextual approach to safeguarding - understanding the peer group, neighbourhood and school environments affecting a young person’s safety and well being. After a discovery phase, the team has identified the potential for tools to support social workers take a local approach. Problem to Be Solved Currently the data used by social workers is accessible on Mosaic, our safeguarding application. We do not use other non-personal data points to support social workers’ situational awareness. Whilst members of the community can report specific concerns about a young person, there is not a tool that captures low level incidents that may be indicators of contextual challenges. Who Are the Users As a child, I need supportive relationships in my peer groups, neighbourhood and school so that I remain safe As a social worker, I need awareness of the local issues that may affect a child or peer group’s wellbeing so that I know when and how to intervene As a member of the community I want to report problems affecting young people so that I can keep my neighbourhood a supportive community Work Already Done A group of social workers, analysts and ICT colleagues worked together on a Discovery phase to understand user needs and develop concepts for products that might enable a contextual approach to safeguarding. The findings of the Discovery phase are available: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/16NVH2GsHbu2H7-iV62l22EWIoPhAqlRlcCp5MR1RTts Existing Team The programme is overseen by a multi-agency board, led by the Director of Children’s Services. This specific work will be advised by the ICT workstream comprising social workers, analysts and managers from social care and ICT. We would expect a product owner to be identified through the development of the solution. Current Phase Discovery Skills & Experience • Provide a multi-disciplinary team, including user research, service design, front-end and back-end developers • Demonstrate a track-record of user-centred design and Agile approaches • Have delivered a service that’s passed a government service standard assessment • Demonstrate experience designing services for a wide range of digital skills and confidence • Be able to build or design a tool that’s so good, people prefer to use it • Show how it can support development of REST APIs to Hackney’s standards • Experience of developing design patterns that can be re-used for other services • Experience of developing social care applications Nice to Haves • Employ, or provide employment opportunities to, care leavers • Demonstrate knowledge of contextual safeguarding • Show expertise of the policies and procedures associated with children’s social care Work Location Hackney Service Centre, 1 Hillman Street, E8 Working Arrangments We would prefer a co-located team based in the Hackney Service Centre for the majority of the engagement, but this doesn’t necessarily have to be full time. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 4 Proposal Criteria • Understanding of user needs from the service • Clarity of the approach • Experience from a similar project • Team structure, including skills, experiences and relevance of individuals • Identification of risks and plan to mitigate them Cultural Fit Criteria • Work as a team with our organisation and other suppliers • Be transparent and collaborative when making decisions • Share knowledge and experience with team members and the wider service Payment Approach Capped time and materials Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 5% Price 35% Questions from Suppliers 1. What aspects of the problem will you be looking to prototype, explore or demonstrate at Alpha stage? For example, user journeys/UX for an app, mapping out the required/desired contextual data and their relationships, exploring how this data will be sourced (including the reporting workflow, Mosaic and data from external systems), technical proof of concept/implementation feasibility (e.g. how to integrate different systems containing relevant data), any automation/learning capabilities... For the stated budget level, you will need to prioritise some of these aspects over others. Have the DfE given any guidance on their expectations or priorities for the Alpha phase? We want to test the utility of the product in supporting social workers to take a contextual approach. We have identified data sources and (at a high-level) are confident that the tool does not have significant technical complexity. Key issues will be around the value of the data; which sources are most useful and why.The DfE is funding the programme of work in its entirety so does not have particular expectations for this piece of work.