Packages of Care and Support for Children with a Disability

Essex County Council is seeking a range of agencies that are able to support the delivery of care for children with a disability within their own home and in the community. Agencies will be required to allocate carers that support families to meet the care needs of Children and Young People age (0 – 25) with a range of disabilities and complexities. A maximum of 3 contracts are available for each area of the County Mid (Braintree, Chelmsford, Maldon) North (Colchester, Tendring) South (Basildon, Castle Point, Rochford) West (Brentwood, Epping, Harlow, Uttlesford) to provide individual packages to those children and young people with a disability either referred through Essex County Council Social Care Teams or via a Self Referral route. Agencies will be required to provide sufficient numbers of carers, who are appropriately experienced, trained, qualified and supported to meet the full requirements of the specification which ranges from the provision of short term ‘light touch’ services that are able to be directly accessed by families without the need for a Social Care assessment, to awake night sitting services for highly complex children and young people, who will be referred by a Social Worker. Individual care packages shall be awarded as and when required, dependent on need and complexity. The three (3) highest scoring bids to the tender response for each quadrant area will be awarded contracts and will form a ranked list for that quadrant. Individual packages will be referred to the highest tendered bidder in the first instance, and then passed to the second and third in the event that the first is unable to meet the requirement. Bidders should note that parental/user choice will take precedent over this stated process. The contract will be for three (3) years with a one (1) year extension option at the Authority's discretion, with annual contract reviews. The anticipated start date for these services is 1st October 2015.

Additional information: The supplier portal will be used throughout the procurement process, and all communications with Essex County Council relating to this procurement exercise must be via the supplier portal. The supplier portal has instructions on how to use the system and access the information as well as a helpdesk to assist Bidders. Essex County Council reserves the right to amend timescales and change the evaluation criteria if there are genuine omissions or mistakes. We also reserve the right to cancel the procurement exercise and/or not to award all or part of a contract. Essex County Council will not be responsible for any costs incurred by suppliers in relation to this procurement exercise.

Suppliers are advised that Essex County Council is subject to the Freedom of Information act 2000 (FOIA) and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR). If a supplier considers that any of the information supplied as part of this procurement exercise should not be disclosed because of its commercial sensitivity, confidentiality or otherwise, it must, when providing this information, clearly identify the specific information it does not wish to be disclosed and clearly specify the reasons for its sensitivity. Essex County Council shall take such statements into consideration in the event that it receives a request pursuant to FOIA or EIR which relates to the information provided by a Supplier. However, if the information is requested Essex County Council may be obliged to under FOIA and/or EIR to disclose such information, irrespective of the supplier's wishes. Please note that it is not sufficient to include a statement of confidentiality encompassing all the information provided in the response.

Suppliers Instructions: How to Express Interest in this Tender 1. Send an email with your organisation name in the subject title field to:

[email protected]

asking to be invited to this event and providing your contact name and Supplier ID/User ANID from your Ariba registration details.

2. If you have more than one registered user who you want invited to the event, provide the name(s) of each registered user in your request as it may not be possible to include additional users at a later stage.

If you are not registered in Ariba at all, go to http://ecc.supplier.ariba.com/ad/register/SSOActions?type=full and follow the instructions to register then follow steps 1 and 2 above. (PLEASE NOTE:35% completion (i.e. mandatory fields only: organisation/user details, commodity, sales territory) is the minimum required for your Ariba cloud registration, you do not need to reach 100% completion.) Once you have been invited to the project all communication will need to be via the project message board.

Closing date for this tender is 10am, 15 June 2015.