SCC LP Early Help Transformation Market Research

Tender description

Surrey County Council is commissioning a piece of research to understand how to improve the access of families to its Early Help provision, focusing on the Family Information Service as a key gateway into support. Early Help means providing support as soon as a problem emerges at any point in a child's life, from foundation years through to teenage years. In Surrey, Early Help is generally understood to describe the support that families receive when they do not meet the threshold for Children's Services. There are many statutory and voluntary organisations that partner with Surrey County Council services to provide early help across the geographical landscape of the county. Early Help has been identified as a priority for Surrey County Council (SCC), in view of improving long-term outcomes for children and families, and of effectively managing the demand for services at higher thresholds. This has led to the launch of the Early Help Transformation Programme, a whole system review, redesign and rebuild of the council's early offer of help. The programme is guided by the principle that the earlier families can find help and support, the greater the opportunity to prevent the escalation of issues and the need for more costly 'late help'. The co-ordination and delivery of Early Help in Surrey is a shared responsibility for Surrey County Council, local district and borough councils, education, health, police and voluntary organisations. Surrey Family Services, a collection of services including Children's Centres, Youth Centres, Supporting Children, Family Support Programme and Early Help Coordination Hubs work together to deliver in partnership with a myriad of providers in every district and borough. Surrey and its partners need to understand the best ways for families to access early help easily and in a coordinated and cohesive way. As part of the early help transformation agenda it is has been decided to carry out some local market research as to how parents/carers are best served in enabling and empowering them to help themselves to gain the necessary information, advice and service delivery that they need. Adjacent to the Early Transformation Programme, Surrey has developed a Parenting Coordination Plan and a critical part of the validity of this plan is input and feedback from parents and carers as to what support they need and how they might access what they need. A key question might be how can we reach families that are currently experiencing barriers in accessing our offer? We need to understand the kind of digital platform that would have the greatest footfall and subsequently the required themes of a marketing and communications strategy to ensure we are reaching all families Please see attached documentation for a full description of the requirement