DHSC: Online Resource Hub for the Children of Alcohol Dependent Parents Programme: Discovery & Alpha

Tender description

Summary of the work The Children of Alcohol Dependent Parents Programme is due to come to an end on 31 March 2022. This project is to undertake the Discovery and Alpha phases, determining user need and scoping the design and content of the online platform promoting sharing of the learning, resources and best practice. Latest start date Tuesday 1 March 2022 Budget Range £100,000 available for the Discovery and Alpha phases Why the Work is Being Done DHSC and the Department of Work and Pensions invested £7.2m from 2018/19-2021/22, to improve outcomes and support for children whose parents are alcohol dependent – The Children of Alcohol Dependent Parents programme (CADeP). This includes a £5.7m local authority innovation fund for 9 areas (13 local authorities) to reduce parental conflict and improve existing systems and support; funding to voluntary sector organisations to develop new resources and training; and additional helpline and contact services for children. The programme ends in March 2022. There is currently no central resource hub by which learning from the programme is being shared, despite our knowledge that many local areas, and services involved in the programme, have produced numerous tools. It is our assumption that sharing resources from the programme via a single online platform will create a legacy for the programme and improve knowledge sharing and national practice. The Discovery and Alpha phases are being undertaken to better understand the users’ needs and shape early prototypes. Subject to findings from the Discovery and Alpha phases, a 3-year funding-stream for the Beta and Live phases, including development, implementation, and maintenance of the online platform, has been allocated for April 2022 onwards. Problem to Be Solved There is no single mechanism for sharing the successful resources produced by the Children of Alcohol Dependent Parents Programme at a national level. This does not maximise the uptake of useful resources developed under the programme, which in turn, hinders knowledge sharing, and implementation of best practice. To ensure the CADEP project meets the above ambitions, we are seeking a non-transactional and innovative digital mechanism for which successful resources from the CADeP Programme can be pooled together into a single point of access, for use by Public Health Commissioners, Directors of Public Health and Children’s Services, front-line workers who may come into contact with children and families affected by parental substance misuse, and potentially affected-by families. The final product should be kept up to date with emerging resources. Who Are the Users We anticipate the customers most suited to using the platform would be Public Health Commissioners, Directors of Public Health and Children’s services, front-line workers who may come into contact with children and families affected by parental substance misuse, and potentially affected-by families. As a Public Health Commissioner/Director of Public Health and Children’s Services/Front-line worker who may come into contact with children and families affected by parental substance misuse/Family member affected by parental substance misuse, I need to know what the most up-to-date and effective resources are for supporting children and families affected by substance misuse, and I need to be able to access these quickly and easily in one central place. This will: • Enhance my knowledge of the support available. [All users] • Improve the quality of services being delivered locally. [Commissioners] • Help to ensure the needs of these vulnerable children and their families are being met. [Directors of Public Health and Children’s Services, Commissioners & front-line workers] • Improve the quality of my practice. [Frontline Workers] Existing Team The supplier will undertake the specified work and will engage regularly with Officials from the Addiction and Inclusion Team at the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, throughout the course of the project. Current Phase Not started Skills & Experience • Provide a multidisciplinary team, comprising of: product management skills , a product manager, a delivery manager or scrum master, • one or more designers, developer, a technical lead, an assisted digital lead, an accessibility lead, a performance analyst, a technical architect, a web operations engineer • Demonstratable experience of: Successfully working with stakeholders to research and understand the user need for the proposed service. • Demonstratable experience of: Developing resources that support organisations and professionals to change their way of working by service design or user-centred design methodologies • Demonstratable experience of: Iteratively, prototyping, designing, and building services which meet user needs and the GOV.UK guidelines for content design, service design and accessibility, including creating user stories. • Demonstratable experience of: Successfully measuring performance of the service, finding ways of accrediting, and handling data, performing quality assurance testing, and identifying and managing risk. • Demonstratable experience of: Administering common open-source databases. Please give examples. Nice to Haves • An understanding of, and demonstrable experience of, building the capability and skills of user centred design into health or social care sector organisations. • An understanding of the challenges faced within the Treatment and Recovery System, and/or in Children’s Services. • Evidence of delivering a project of similar scale in a similar timeframe. Work Location The work can be performed from any location, but it will be coordinated by staff in DHSC’s Leeds and London offices (NOTE - these staff are currently working remotely). Working Arrangments Work may be carried out from multiple locations including the Supplier’s offices. Meetings with DHSC staff and other key stakeholders can be conducted remotely, but the supplier should be prepared to travel to sites across England if this is not feasible, or if greater insight/information can be obtained from key stakeholders in person. Given the impact of the pandemic on local services over the next few months, the project will likely be carried out completely remotely. Security Clearance BPSS as a minimum. Preference for contractors to already hold SC clearance, however DHSC would be willing to sponsor the SC clearance process at the supplier's expense. One person in the team must have SC clearance. Additional T&Cs Expenses will be paid in alignment to Department of Health and Social Care terms and conditions where prior authorisation has been obtained. Expenses will not be payable for London or where the resource is home-based. Suppliers are obliged to provide sufficient guarantees to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures so that the processing meets the requirements of GDPR and ensures the protection of the rights of data subjects. For further information please see the Information Commissioner's Office website: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/data-protection-reform/overview-of-the-gdpr/ No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 5 Proposal Criteria • Explain your technical solution to the project ensuring deliverables are met within the timeframe, how you plan to design, build, test and iterate, deploy and host the software [15%]. • Estimated time frames, team structure, skills, and experience [15%]. • Approach to identifying and working with external stakeholders to determine and analyse user need throughout the project, accessibility, assisted digital needs and testing prototypes with real users [10%]. • Describe how you will measure your performance, and the performance of the service, and find ways of accrediting and handling data [10%]. • Describe your approach and methodology to identifying risks and dependencies, in addition to managing them [10%]. Cultural Fit Criteria • How you have established trusted advisory relationships with senior stakeholders in complex organisations [1%]. • Approach to working with a wide range of stakeholders, including those with little technical expertise or understanding of agile and user centred design. Examples of established productive, collaborative relationships [7%]. • Outline your approach to working transparently and collaboratively (internally and externally), when making decisions and recommendations. Provide at least 2 examples of how you have used the techniques successfully [7%]. • Outline how you take responsibility for your work, and share knowledge and learning both internally and externally, providing at least one example for each [4%]. • Demonstrate that you have a no-blame culture and encourage people to learn from their mistakes [1%]. Payment Approach Capped time and materials Assessment Method • Case study • Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 20% Price 20% Questions from Suppliers 1. Please confirm if the 100k budget covers both discovery and alpha phases, or is there a separate alpha budget? The £100k budget is envisaged to cover both phases. 2. Please confirm timescales for completion of each phase? Is it expected that discovery and alpha will be completed by end of March? If possible we would like both completed by the end of March but we recognise that this may be unlikely. As a minimum, the discovery must be completed by March 31st. 3. Can DHSC confirm how suppliers should respond to question 1, ‘Provide a multidisciplinary team, comprising of: product management skills, a product manager, a delivery manager or scrum master’?Can DHSC confirm how suppliers should respond to question 2, ‘One or more designers, developer, a technical lead, an assisted digital lead, an accessibility lead, a performance analyst, a technical architect, a web operations engineer’?Are you seeking an example of having provided a comparable team for another client, or merely a statement/explanation of our ability to provide such a team? Please provide a statement and explanation of your ability to provide such a team 4. Can you please confirm the anticipated duration of Discovery and Alpha? If possible we would like both phases completed by the end of March, if not possible then Discovery must be completed by the end of March with up to the end of April available for the Alpha 5. Essential criteria 2 looks to follow on from essential criteria 1. Should this be a single question or is it supposed to be split into two? Are you ideally looking for multiple examples or a multi-disciplinary team consisting of these roles on single delivery? That's correct, it would have been a single question but the criteria have a very low wordcount so it has been split into 2. We are looking for a statement and explanation of your ability to provide these roles in relationship to this discovery and alpha. 6. Will this Alpha be formally assessed by GDS? If so it would seem that 4 weeks (1st Mar – 31st Mar) may be difficult. Discovery is recommended by GDS as 4-8 weeks and Alpha 8 weeks. We anticipate that it will be a discovery with a light touch Alpha rather than a fully working prototype at the end. 7. Is SC clearance required for the Discovery and Scoping phases, or will this only be needed in Development phases? We do not have SC clearance and note it takes 1 to 3 months to be obtained. Would this rule us out of applying for the Discovery and Scoping phases? I can confirm that SC is not required for this stage. 8. SC clearance is not usually required for work of this nature. Is SC clearance a must or desirable requirement? I can confirm that SC is not required for this stage. 9. Robust discoveries typically take longer than a month, especially to recruit the specific (and busy) professionals you need to engage in this research. Will you eliminate (as ‘unmet’) or mark down suppliers that propose a longer timeframe with rationale in their proposals? We anticipate this discovery will not be particularly complex and should be achievable within the time frame stated. 10. It will be particularly difficult (in only 100 words) for suppliers to adequately demonstrate that they (can) meet the range of 4-5 criteria listed in essential skill/experience #6. Technically that means you will need to eliminate them from the process has an unmet essential skill. Can you please provide a steer on what you expect in this answer to avoid this? We will accept confirmation that you have experience of this skill/experience and if shortlisted, experience can be exapnded on. 11. Please clarify why you require evidence of ‘performing quality assurance testing’ if this is not to deliver a ‘fully working prototype’. Despite this being a potentially light touch alpha, we would still like to see light experience of performing quality assurance 12. Could you please clarify what information you are seeking in question 6, ‘Successfully measuring performance of the service, finding ways of accrediting and handling data, performing quality assurance testing, and identifying and managing risk’? These are somewhat disparate activities, and we would be grateful for some more guidance as to what DHSC is seeking to learn/understand about suppliers’ capability. Are you seeking to assess suppliers’ experience taking services to Alpha and through Alpha assessment? As there is potentially the opportunity to go through a light alpha, we would like to see experience in delivering an alpha/assesment.