Social services

Tender description

The London Borough of Hackney Children’s and Young People’s Services, is currently in the process of exploring ways in which existing resources can be used to potentially enhance partnership working across three of its services: 1) Family Network Meeting; 2) Family Contact Service; and 3) Parental Assessment Service. The London Borough of Hackney Children’s and Young People’s Services, is currently in the process of exploring ways in which existing resources can be used to potentially enhance partnership working across three of its services: 1) Family Network Meeting, 2) Family Contact Service and 3. Parental Assessment Service. (1) Research continues to evidence that children and young people achieve better outcomes when they are able to remain with their family network. Children who become looked after can experience disadvantage through a lack of permanency. Children’s Social Care will always attempt to reunify children and young people with their families and explore existing support networks. The Family Network Meeting or Family Group Conference aims to ensure that extended family support is available to support families and work alongside the professional support available. The ultimate goal is for Children’s Social Care to withdraw their support at a suitable point, with the family drawing upon their own resources so that children and young people can live safely and securely within their community. The Family Network Service or Family Group Conference is required to be a flexible and responsive service that includes the delivery of services at weekends and out of normal office hours. This could occasionally also be outside of the UK within the fixed budget. The meeting should focus on the target groups of children under 5 years old, at the pre-birth stage and children at risk of being placed in Local Authority care through Care Proceedings. (2) The Family Contact Service is a specialist targeted provision aimed at improving opportunities for children in care and to ensure that they have high quality, regular and consistent contact with families. The service facilitates the continued preference for supporting children and young people to stay with their families. There is a close working partnership with Hackney Family Intervention and Support Services and an integrated way of working which is vital to the successful delivery of the service and to manage the demand for this. (3) Hackney Children’s Services are required to undertake specific assessments for care proceedings such as special guardianship assessments and parenting assessments. Information from other boroughs has highlighted that the family contact centre is often a suitable place to undertake such assessments as the children subject to independent assessments are often engaging in supervised contact with their parents whilst proceedings are under way. This process has raised the option of including the development of a parenting assessment service alongside the Family Contact Service. This will enable a more effective and efficient means of producing independent parenting assessments to provide evidence for court proceedings. Hackney Council wishes to consult with providers in relation to the above services and has organised a ‘market engagement’ event to assist in shaping its commissioning process. The market engagement event will take place on 18.6.2018. Providers will be given the opportunity to not only listen to the Council’s vision, but to contribute to the discussion on how the Council can help with: — Proactively developing local knowledge and relationships, — Using resources to best support children, families and communities. Spaces are limited and will be offered on a ‘first come, first served’ basis. If you would like to participate in this unique event, please register your interest by email to CYPS.ITT@Hackney.gov.uk by 11.6.2018. Interested organisations are requested to state their area of expertise and can consider whether each or all of the above services can be provided collectively or in part. In addition, interested organisations are requested to complete the supplier questionnaire on the London Tenders portal (https://www.londontenders.org/) and submit along with their expression of interest by 11.6.2018.