Children’s Innovation Partnership

Leicestershire County Council wishes to procure a Partner to develop a “Children’s Innovation Partnership” (CIP) to design and deliver creative service models, which provide cost effective outcome focussed solutions, to meet the aims of the Council’s Care Placement Strategy (CPS). The initial priorities will be to offer good quality cost effective residential care to meet the needs of Looked After Children (LAC) with complex behaviours and disabilities and to provide additional capacity to enhance edge of care services. The CPS covers the whole care system from point of entry in Children’s Services to leaving care and aims to manage demand and provide the most cost effective placement and support services that deliver the best outcomes for children and young people.

The Council wishes to enter into a collaboration agreement with an organisation or lead organisation acting for a consortium that can both design and deliver innovative services that provide improved outcomes for Leicestershire young people on the edge of care through to leaving care including children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND). The CIP will include 3 stages: design, delivery and evaluation. The Council expects the Partner to be able to bring its own financial or in kind contribution to the design stage and to the delivery stage to enhance the Councils statutory requirements in providing services to LAC and children with SEND. The Partner must have both the capacity to provide high quality advice and deliver major change in children’s services. It is expected that the Partner will have the experience, expertise and quality standards to deliver the majority of services designed by the CIP and therefore must have a proven track record in providing children’s services for edge of care, fostering, adoption, and permanence and care leavers.

The estimated maximum annual value is £70,400,000 this is based on the 2018/19 budgets for the services covered by the CIP. The estimated maximum total value is £704,000,000 over 10 years. It is not intended that the full budget for each service area will be spent through the CIP. The Council will continue to use existing contracts and frameworks to purchase services. The scope and cost for each service delivered through the CIP will be agreed between the Council and the Partner as part of the design stage and will be within the budget envelope for existing services. The contract duration will be an initial 1 year plus an option(s) to extend for a further period or periods up to a maximum of 10 years.