Information, Advice and Guidance and Tracking Service (Connexions) – stakeholder engagement event

As you may be aware Dorset County Council currently contracts with Ansbury to provide targeted information advice and guidance services (you may know as Connexions) for Dorset residents who have a statement of educational need or are a looked after child or are at risk of not participating in post 16 education, employment or training.

The Connexions Service has a central role in helping to deal with problems experienced by young people, removing any wider barriers to effective engagement in learning that young people are suffering. It also brokers access for young people to a range of more specialist services. This service helps Dorset County Council fulfil its statutory duty to make support available to young people below the age of 19 that will encourage, enable or assist them to participate in education or training and to secure sufficient suitable education and training provision for all young people aged 16-18 (inclusive). The Connexions service tracks the participation of young people in education and training, and ensure that young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) are supported to participate.

This contract is now coming to an end (30th September 2016) and to comply with procurement regulations Dorset County Council will be inviting tenders this spring for an information, advice, guidance and tracking service. We wish to engage with stakeholders to inform the development of the new service specification and to help with this you are invited to attend an event on Thursday 4th February (9.45 for a 10am start with a 12 noon finish) in the centre of Dorchester, where we can generate feedback on our service priorities given our statutory tracking duty, our corporate parenting obligations to Children in Care and Care Leavers).

You will be aware that the Council has to find different ways of providing services within a reduced level of funding overall given the government funding settlement for local authorities, so as part of this event we will undertake some group exercises to consider what service provision might look like for this service given a range of funding scenarios.

If you are interested in attending the event please reply to me (email: tom.smith@dorsetcc.gov.uk as soon as possible and by no later than 4pm on Wednesday 27th January as places will be allocated on a first come first served basis. I look forward to hearing from you and I can provide you with details of the location and a draft agenda.