Provision of Targeted Family Support Services to young children through Childrens' Centres July 23-Mar24

Concepts

• children centre services
• health and social work
• gloucester
• provision of targeted family support services
• young children
• children centres
• core purpose of children centre services
• family support services
• families
• families programme

Location

Gloucestershire:

Description

Targeted Family Support Services through Children Centres across Gloucestershire Children Centre Services are identified as key delivery partners within the Early Help strategy and Families First programme (national Troubled Families Programme) and are critical to the delivery of Early Help to children and families from pre-birth through to 5 years of age. The core purpose of Children Centre Services is to improve outcomes for young children and their families and reduce inequalities between families in greatest need and their peers (Statutory Guidance and section 2 Childcare Act 2006) This VEAT notice details the modification (extension) of the existing contracts from July 2023 – March 2024 (and associated cost implications).

Lot Division

Award Detail

CPV Codes

• 85000000 - Health and social work services
• 80000000 - Education and training services

Legal Justification

The proposed modification (extension) to the current contracts (and associated cost implications) is necessary as a result of an unexpected delay to the Council's re-procurement of a new contractor for the delivery of Children Centre Services. The Children Centre Services are vital to the community which they serve. It is therefore necessary to procure additional services from the incumbent contractors to ensure that services continue to be available to the community until the re-procurement is concluded. It is not economically or technically feasible for another contractor to be engaged by the Council to deliver the Children Centre Services due to the short length of the proposed extensions (July 2023 – March 2024). Engaging a replacement contractor would require additional mobilisation time, cost and resource (including the upskilling of the new contractor (and its staff)) which would be disproportionate to the short extension period. Engaging a new contractor would also impact on and unnecessarily disrupt currently supported vulnerable families utilising the Children Centre Services. Even where those difficulties and impacts could be overcome (which, with a minimum 3 month mobilisation, the Council considers not to be possible), engaging a new contractor for the extension period would inevitably result in significant inconvenience and substantial duplication of costs for the Council. In particular, the: • costs of running a procurement process for the extension period when a further re-procurement for the Children Centre Services would likely begin shortly thereafter; • the additional cost of a short-term service provision; • cost of mobilising and contract managing the change to a new contractor (if the incumbents were not successful) to incur the same costs for a further re-procurement of the services commencing 1 April 2024; the need to monitor the activity of multiple contractors and the interface between them to meet vulnerable family demands during the extension period Total contract value before the modifications Value excluding VAT: £23,291,763 Total contract value after the modifications Value excluding VAT: £26,100,867 This value includes an inflation uplift for 2023/2024.

Other Information

** PREVIEW NOTICE, please check Find a Tender for full details. **