Health and social work services

Tender description

The Health and Social Care Act 2012 ("The Act") makes provision for contractual arrangements between local authorities and their Local Healthwatch organisation, which must be a corporate body and a social enterprise. The Act allows flexibility for councils to choose the commissioning route that offers the best value for money in their communities. This process is a competitive bidding exercise to secure grant funding via Lincolnshire County Council and as such is not subject to the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. Local Healthwatch is at the heart of a health and care service that is centred around patients and users. Local Healthwatch gathers peoples' views (whether current users or not) and experiences of the health and social care system. This can help commissioners and services providers to be more responsive to what matters to service users, carers and the public, and enable them to design services around their needs. In this way, community views will have real influence with those who commission and provide services. Delivering a successful Local Healthwatch which is rooted in communities and responsive to their needs will mean working collaboratively so that the organisation can operate as part of existing local community networks, independently of local authority and NHS commissioning and provision. Local Healthwatch must ensure it can have maximum reach across the diversity of the local community, including forming positive and collaborative relationships with local community and voluntary sector organisations, utilising existing information, advice and local knowledge to best effect. Local Healthwatch organisations must be: — a body corporate (i.e. a legal entity), — a social enterprise independent from the local authority, — able to employ its own staff and involve volunteers subject to the public sector equality duty under the Equality Act 2010 and Freedom of Information Act.