Social work and related services

Tender description

Hertfordshire County Council (the ‘Council’) is carrying out Pre-Procurement Market Engagement (‘PPME’) in relation to its Apprenticeship Framework Agreement: the Council is seeking a range of providers to deliver the Integrated Degree Apprenticeship for Social Worker-Level 6. The Council will consider the feedback to help inform the Council’s options and further decision making. For the avoidance of doubt, this stage of the project is not part of a formal procurement process and the Council is not committing to carrying out such a process. Participation or non-participation in the PPME shall not prevent any supplier participating in a potential future procurement, nor is it intended that any information supplied as part of the PPME shall place any supplier at an advantage in a potential procurement process. Hertfordshire County Council (the ‘Council’) is a large shire county in the south-east of England with a population of 1 200 000. Hertfordshire is a 2-tier authority with 10 district and borough councils providing complementary local services to residents. Hertfordshire County Council (‘The Council’) provides social care for adults and children, schools and education, public libraries, public health (since April 2013), highway and road maintenance, environmental services, trading standards and household waste sites as well as a fire and rescue service. Project background: The Council prides itself in being a learning organisation, offering a range of CPD opportunities to employees. In 2020, to run alongside a number of other qualifying social work programmes, The Council intends to introduce the Social Work Degree Apprenticeship. The SWDA is a 3-year, practice-based route into social work that pays trainees a wage while they attend training for a degree in social work. The Council are seeking training and education providers who are HCPC approved to deliver the SWDA for a number of chosen employees from adults and children’s services. This will be funded through the Apprenticeship Levy. The Council intends to identify eight employees, across both adults’ and children’s services, to enrol on an Integrated Degree Apprenticeship for Social Worker-Level 6 in 2020. The Council is looking for providers who have created innovative programmes for the SWDA. It is hoped that the chosen providers will have a programme which is flexible, creative and responsive to the local authority’s needs. This brief is being used as an outline to engage with the market so the Council can discuss the opportunity with potentially interested organisations. It is anticipated that the selected providers would be required to work collaboratively with the Council to continually assess and support the Council’s apprentices in gaining their social work qualification.