Health and social work services

Tender description

Local authorities predominately across the South West of England (the ‘South West Regional Consortia’) and other sub-regions, have come together to commission children’s residential care, in order to fulfil their statutory duty to provide high quality residential care for looked after children within their individual authorities. Initially, the following authorities that will be purchasing through this pseudo-DPS are: — South Gloucestershire Council, — Bath and North East Somerset Council, — Bedford Borough Council, — Gloucestershire County Council, — North Somerset Council, — Swindon Borough Council, — Wiltshire County Council. Other local authorities may join this 'Light Touch' Pseudo-DPS during the life of the contract. Local authorities predominately across the South West of England (the ‘South West Regional Consortia’) and other sub-regions, have come together to commission children’s residential care, in order to fulfil their statutory duty to provide high quality residential care for looked after children within their individual authorities. Initially, the following authorities that will be purchasing through this pseudo-DPS are: — South Gloucestershire Council, — Bath and North East Somerset Council, — Bedford Borough Council, — Gloucestershire County Council, — North Somerset Council, — Swindon Borough Council Wiltshire County Council. Other local authorities may join this 'Light Touch' Pseudo-DPS during the life of the contract. Commissioning as a consortium of Authorities allows us to engage meaningfully with the market whilst enabling us to achieve efficiencies in the purchasing and development of services and advocating better care on behalf of children and young people. Although the contracts resulting from the DPS will not be split into lots, the DPS itself is, these are listed below: Lot 1: Planned and same day residential care; Lot 2: Crisis care; Lot 3: Residential care with DFE regulated education; Lot 4: Residential parenting assessments; Lot 5: Clinically Led (therapeutic) residential care — this lot is currently ‘Passive’ (i.e. not being tendered at this time) but will be developed and become 'Active' during the life of the contract; Lot 6: Children with disabilities. South Gloucestershire Council is leading this process, using a ‘pseudo-DPS', in line with the light touch regime of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, to establish a pre-qualified list of providers that participating local authority purchasers, may use to call-off their requirements for services. The duration of the DPS is 4 years with the potential to extend for a further 2 years. Applications for providers to be awarded a place on the DPS will usually be opened once per year, during December/January for award of Contracts to commence at the start of the new financial year (April). The Council reserves the right to re-open the DPS for applications outside of the normal window, if it deems appropriate to do so.