Children's Social Care - Sector Capability, Capacity and Skills

The purpose of this PIN is to initiate market consultation; it is not a call for tenders. The PIN is intended to:

1. Raise awareness with the market of a potential future procurement process, and to enable time for organisations to begin early discussions with the Department for Education (the department) and each other as to how they may be able to deliver any future contract.

2. Inform the market that the department will be undertaking market consultation activity, to gather information about the supply market; to explore potential delivery models and associated benefits of those models; and to inform its understanding of the risks and issues relevant to managing transition to, and mobilisation of, any new service arrangements.

This will consist of an online event which will take place on 20 February 2025, time to be confirmed. If you are interested in joining this event, please contact [email protected] and [email protected] who will arrange for an online invitation to be issued in due course. We intend to share the questions and answers from the events with all potential suppliers.

This PIN, and the online event, relate to the department's interest in providing a support offer to help local authorities (LAs) improve their data and digital maturity with respect to children's social care (CSC) services, to help achieve the strategic objectives set out in the Children's Social Care Data and Digital Strategy (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/childrens-social-care-data-and-digital-strategy/5106bf76-259a-474c-acd3-b187812007c6): supporting strong data culture and leadership; supporting systems and technology to meet sector need; and improving the data we collect, share, and use. There is an estimated budget of £750K - £1m for year one (25/26), with expectations (subject to future funding decisions) to grow spend to approximately £2m per year for a further 2 years.

We are looking for a supplier (or consortia of suppliers) to scope, test and begin delivering a support offer to the sector, as a centre of excellence for children's social care data and digital, to help build the sector's data and digital capacity. We expect it to involve: - working with the department and LAs to co-develop a vision and action plans for a data and digitally mature sector - providing expertise on CSC data and digital, including hands-on support with specific LAs - helping LAs optimise how they configure and tailor their digital case management systems - developing and maintaining tools and resources that meet the needs of users - research to provide a more detailed picture of CSC data quality, identifying where to focus improvements - facilitating knowledge sharing, innovation, and collaboration between LAs, to share guidance, best practice and ideas - career and skills development to grow capability and capacity

Additional information: This procurement will be run either on PCR15 or PA23 regulations, depending on the date of publication