Autism Support Services

Birmingham's Supporting Families programme is a response to the Governments Supporting Families grant. The Supporting Families Programme provides targeted interventions for families experiencing multiple problems including domestic abuse, crime and antisocial behaviour, poor school attendance, unemployment, mental and physical health and children in need of help and protection. The key principles of the Supporting Families Programme include the following:

• Whole family working - Problems experienced by family members are often interconnected. A keyworker builds a relationship with the whole family. They complete one assessment for the whole family, coordinate services around a single plan and offer support and challenge.

• Multi-agency working - Multiple professional agencies cooperate and share information in a joined-up approach to supporting families and protecting children.

• Focus on outcomes and data - The programme requires areas to establish an outcomes framework across multiple services and encourages them to achieve those outcomes by tracking them over time.

The Trust are looking to commission a service that will provide joint working with the Birmingham Children's Trust Early Help Service. The Early Help service consists of one Early Help team in each of the 10 localities across Birmingham.

The service will provide direct interventions to children with diagnosed autism and those undiagnosed but displaying behaviours which could be a result of autism, and their families. The specialist interventions will be specifically related to support associated with the child's autism. The brief will also include upskilling practitioners within the Early Help service by offering advice, guidance and training on autism enabling practitioners to respond effectively to families; and deliver group work to parents for eg Cygnet.

Subject to the outcome of the Market Sounding, BCT intends to seek a suitable Provider to deliver this service, through a competitive tender process. The Trust would be looking to commence the tender in December 2022, with an intention for the new service to commence approx April 2023. The contract would be for a period of 2 years, April 2023 until March 2025. The contract may be renewed after the 2nd year subject to satisfactory performance and funding availability.

We would like to hear from organisations who wish to work with BCT to deliver both excellent outcomes for children and young people with autism and value for money.

Potential bidders will not be prejudiced by any response or failure to respond to the market sounding exercise.

BCT has developed a questionnaire that they would like interested parties to complete. We will then decide on the next phase of engagement based on the outcome of the Market Sounding.

Deadline for questionnaire submission and participation: Noon, Friday 4th November 2022.