The Provision of Independent Fostering Agency Services

Fifteen local authorities within the South Central region (Southampton City Council, Portsmouth City Council, Oxfordshire County Council, Bournemouth Borough Council, Dorset County Council, Wiltshire County Council, Isle of Wight County Council, Poole Borough Council, Surrey County Council, Reading Borough Council, Slough Borough Council, Wokingham Borough Council, Bracknell Forest Council, The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead and West Berkshire Council) are working together to improve Independent Foster Care placement choice and quality for children and young people they look after.

As such, the Councils, wish to notify providers in the market of a forthcoming opportunity to be selected as a potential provider of Independent Foster Care services to the Councils via a four year, multi provider, multi lot framework, to identify for the benefit of the market the proposed services under each lot and to set out the Councils’ proposals for opening up the framework to new providers during its term.

Proposed date for Publication of ITT – 15/08/2016 Proposed closing date for ITT submissions – 29/09/2016

In order to maintain and in the hope of increasing the scope and quality of foster care placements available to the Councils and service users, the Councils have decided to take advantage of the flexibilities available under regulation 76 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 and design a procurement structure that allows the framework to be opened up to the market annually post initial contract award. The process for so doing will be as follows:

Annually during the term of each framework agreement, providers not on the frameworks, including those that have previously tried but failed to obtain a place, will be given a further opportunity to obtain a place.

The Councils will advertise this opportunity before each anniversary of the commencement date of the framework agreements and will place the advertisements in Contracts Finder, OJEU and Curtis Fitch. The adverts will invite providers of foster care services not on the frameworks to submit a tender on the same terms and against the same selection and evaluation criteria as the existing framework providers tendered against.

During this annual opening of the framework, existing framework providers will be invited to submit improved tenders which will be evaluated at the same time and on the same terms as tenders submitted by potential new framework participants.

Any existing framework providers that do not submit improved tenders shall be deemed to have confirmed that all aspects of their original tender, or in cases where they have previously submitted an improved tender, their previous tender, remain the same.

***Further information is contained within the "Additional text" section of this notice.***

Additional information: Following the evaluation of tenders from potential new framework providers and the evaluation of any revised tenders from existing framework providers and taking into account the scores previously received by existing framework providers that have not submitted improved tenders, successful new providers will be admitted to the relevant framework (s) and existing providers will be re-ranked as necessary to take into account the scores of the new providers and the revised scores of any existing providers.

It is anticipated that the LOTS will be broken down as follows (subject to change):

Lot 1: Children aged 0-4, 5-10 and 11+ Lot 2: Parent & Child Placements Lot 3: Disabled Children & Young People Lot 4: Alternative to Residential Lot 5: Prevention of Offending (to be confirmed)

The tender documents and evaluation criteria have taken in to account feedback from previous provider events. Based on this feedback, further information in relation to the proposed tender process can be found attached to this notice.