THE PROVISION OF HELPING PEOPLE LIVE AT HOME SERVICE AND ‘EXTRA CARE’ SUPPORT SERVICE

Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council and NHS Tameside & Glossop Clinical Commissioning Group (the commissioners) are committed to the provision of high quality services to enable people to live in their own homes.

The service will deliver:

• Helping People Live at Home Service for all adults aged eighteen years and above, children and complex care and
• Extra Care Support for older people, people with a learning disability and people with mental health needs (aged fifty five and over).

The aim is to provide a good quality, personalised outcome-focused service appropriate to the needs and outcomes identified in a service users support plan and to demonstrate this through assistance with personal, practical and social/emotional tasks associated with ordinary living and a fulfilling and meaningful life.

This process has two key aims:

1. To establish a standing list of providers to deliver helping people live at home services to the citizens of Tameside (NB: this will be an open standing list i.e. applications after the contract award will be able to go on the standing list which will be used for any future tendering opportunities for home support and extra care).

2. To shortlist up to twelve providers to tender for a zoned area.

The commissioners are inviting expressions of interest for the above tender and/or inclusion on the standing list.

The tender process will follow the restricted procedure and has been advertised in OJEU since the 1 April 2016.

The commissioners will ideally appoint six providers to provide care and support to service users in the borough of Tameside. Four of these providers will be also be allocated an extra care housing scheme also located in the borough of Tameside. There is a potential that the commissioners will be looking at the development of further extra care schemes in those localities which currently do not have a scheme, if this is the case there will be an expectation that the provider who is awarded that particular area will provide the service. Therefore providers applying to be a zoned provider must be willing and able to deliver an extra care schemes.

Details of each zone, extra care scheme, hourly rate and total budget is outlined in the tender documents.

Organisations will be given the opportunity in the PQQ to state what services they can provide, i.e. adults, children or complex care.

Please note that only providers who can offer all the following services will be considered for the tender:

• Helping People Live at Home Service (aged over eighteen years old).
• Complex care (aged over eighteen years old).
• Extra care (aged fifty five and over).

All other organisations will be considered for the standing list only.

Key elements of the service are:

• To provide the service for service users over seven days per week, fifty two weeks per year and operate over a 24 hour day;
• To provide a good quality flexible service appropriate to the assessed needs and outcomes of the service user in their own home;
• To enable service users to remain living in their own home in safety and comfort;
• To assist service users with key tasks maintaining and improving their independence and lifestyle.

In addition to this the extra care elements are:

• The provider will work to the number of hours identified within the scheme to meet service users’ needs and outcomes. Individual service users’ personal budget may alter over time dependant on assessed need but this will be managed within the total hours for each scheme;
• The delivery of nightly sleep in or waking nights (dependent on the scheme) will be included in the provision of this service;
• The service will typically include practical, personal and social/emotional care, laundry, shopping and sitting services. It will also include planned collective activities within each scheme.

Future Service Changes

Tameside are moving towards a fully integrated position including hospital community health and social care.
Initially there would be acknowledgement that very little would change by way of delivery in the first six to twelve months. The time will be used for the council and the CCG to work with the contracted providers to consolidate the six zones and prepare for significant changes planned and implement incrementally over the life of the contract.

The plans will include (though not exclusively) working in partnership on the development of the following:

• Commissioning on the basis of outcomes allowing the provider to look not only at directly delivering care but opening up a whole range of options for meeting need such as encouraging the greater use of technology (such as medication dispensers to reduce the number of physical calls required to ensure medication is taken), adaptations and equipment; supporting people to access social activities available in their local community to replace direct staff visits; the use of telephone calls to replace a physical check call (but have the flexibility to call to the house in the absence of a response). The incentive for providers would be that the reduction of delivery of direct staff time through more innovative approaches to delivering outcomes would support their ability to pick up all referrals but also potentially reduce their delivery costs of the service.

• Over time commissioners will be looking to move to each zoned contract having a total budget allocated to it based on the prevailing actual hours at the hourly rate agreed. The zoned contract providers will be paid on a monthly basis in line with other contracts held by the Commissioners. This is aimed to give providers more surety on income and ensure that a significant proportion of their staff are employed on contracts and reduce the reliance on staff contracted on a zero hours basis. In this option the provider will co-ordinate all the work referred to the zone within the contract price – including any fluctuations in care needs.
• The model of delivery would need to have a strong ongoing reablement emphasis in service delivery where enable providers would work to reduce individual packages to ensure that they can deliver support for new referrals as well as respond flexibly to fluctuations in care needs of existing users in their zone.
• Commissioners will work with providers to blend health and social care roles where it makes sense to do so and thereby design a ‘therapeutic workforce’. The aim should be to build on the role profiles Skill for Care have done across health, social care and housing.
• Assessments will be outcome based and will not indicate to providers an allocation of hours. This moves away from the current practise of detailing calls, tasks and time that support should be delivered.
• The provider will arrange with the services users and carers directly the times and activity for each call to meet the identified need.
• The provider will still be required to retain detailed support plans though these will reflect the agreements reached with service users and their families/carers, and will need to implement electronic call monitoring. This information will need to be made available to Commissioners on a regular basis.
• A further angle to this is that providers will be charged with becoming actively involved in positively promoting care as a career of choice and offering this as a stepping stone into careers nursing, social work and all associated caring options.

It is the commissioners’ preliminary view that TUPE regulations may apply when these contracts is awarded to a new provider.

It is proposed that the contracts will commence on 31 October 2016 and will run for a period of three years. The commissioners’ may, subject to approval and re-negotiation, wish to extend the contracts for a further period(s) of up to three years.

The award for the tender will be in keeping with a Best Value approach.

The commissioners have given due regard to the Social Value Act 2012 in consideration of the economic, social and environmental benefits of the delivery of this service.

All documentation must be completed and submitted electronically by using Pro Contract through www.thechest.nwce.gov.uk by the due date of 03 May 2016 @ 12 Noon. Tender submission packs will follow 24 May 2016. The closing date for tender submissions for those organisations short-listed is week ended 23 June 2016.

If you are interested in tendering for the above contract or standing list but are unsure about the electronic tendering process, please contact in writing to: Sue Hogan, Joint Commissioning & Performance Management Team, New Century House, Windmill Lane, Denton, Tameside M34 2GP, or e-mail sue.hogan@tameside.gov.uk

Please note that any contracts awarded as part of this process may be open to other purchasing authorities in the local area.