Supporting National Autism Strategy in Leicester, Leicestershire & Rutland

Supporting the National Autism Strategy through Workforce Development in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland


Leicestershire County Council has been in receipt of funding for the purpose of supporting the National Autism Strategy on behalf of the following organisations:

Leicestershire County Council

Leicester City Council

NHS Leicester City, Leicestershire County & Rutland

A key feature of the support offered will be the provision of workforce development for those supporting people living with Autism. These may be individuals, charitable organisations or social enterprises or private companies.

This process aims to source a quality provider of this development activity for a period of up to four years, to be reviewed every twelve months.

The service consists of Beginners Guide Workshops and Categories B and C. Bidders should note that there are four categories to the specification of requirement. Category A is currently delivered via an e-learning tool hosted by Leicestershire County Council and is therefore not part of the specification. As such it is important to note that the desired solution should not be technology based (e-learning). Rather the solution is specified as classroom based learning. Technology based proposals will not be accepted.

Bidders are asked to provide a response and price for categories B and C only, which Leicestershire County Council would like to be delivered by the same provider. For this reason the evaluation of bids will be for both Category B & C and the associated Beginners Guide Workshops.
o Category A – Basic Awareness e-learning: For information only.
o Category B – Enhanced Training: This element of the requirement is currently being delivered via 1 day sessions 10 times a year. We are looking to maintain a similar delivery model and frequency of delivery. Each session must be able to accommodate 20 staff.
o Category C – Specialist Learning: This element is currently being delivered via a 1 day session, 5 times a year. We are looking to maintain a similar delivery model and frequency of delivery. Each session must be able to accommodate 20 staff.
o Beginners Guide to Autism Workshops: This would be a half day workshop for newly diagnosed adults, partners, parents and adult carers of children or adults with a recent diagnosis: to friends and family of all individuals on the autistic spectrum and to anybody wishing to access introductory information about the condition. We would anticipate approximately 4 sessions a year being run.