Prior Information Notice: Provision of Homecare Services in Somerset

THIS RELATES TO A PRIOR INFORMATION NOTICE. THIS IS NOT AT THIS STAGE A CONTRACT OPPORTUNITY.

***** This Prior Information Notice has been updated with the details from the tender event held on 14th June 2016*****

Somerset County Council (SCC) and Somerset Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) are jointly commissioning the provision of homecare in Somerset. We are seeking interest from organisations that would like to provide Homecare services in Somerset.

Somerset County Council is intending to lead a procurement process in the Summer of 2016.

Care and Support at Home
The provision of Homecare services in Somerset is determined by the formal assessed eligible outcomes for social care support or eligibility for Continuing Health Care funded provision for End of Life Care and Long Term Conditions. The service will include:

• focus on supporting service users and carers to have consistent staff who treat them with kindness, dignity and respect;
• secure high quality personalised care and support delivered when and where the service user needs it;
• be focused on improving outcomes for service users by working with individual service users, getting to know them and understand their individual needs and how these can best be met. This might be through enabling what the service user, their carer and family can do for themselves or as a family, fostering independence, as well as providing holistic care to meet their needs, in partnership with health and care professionals;
• find out about and work with service users personal care plans to support the service user to remain in their own home where the patient has expressed a wish to be cared for within their own home, thereby contributing to the reduction of inappropriate hospital admissions.

The service will support service users with varying assessed levels of needs to live at home for as long as it is safe and appropriate to do so. In all cases, the focus is on helping Service Users to optimise their independence through working in partnership to provide personal care, support with daily living and with essential domestic tasks

Care and Support in Extra Care Housing

This will involve working in partnership with the ECH scheme landlords to deliver:

• a 24 hour 7 days a week support service (to include Housing Related Support);
• incidental care in an emergency at any time to all Extra Care Housing tenants;
• packages of care for those with assessed needs.


End of Life Care
This will involve working in partnership with service users and their families to provide personal care, support with daily living and with essential domestic tasks at the end of life.

For this group of service users, it will be important for care staff to work in partnership with the lead professional responsible for coordinating the end of life care plan (usually the district nurse) and with the GP to meet the needs of the individual with empathy and sensitivity at the end of life. This will also involve working as part of time with other end of life care providers such as Marie Curie and St Margaret’s Somerset Hospice.
Organisations that take part will not be advantaged or disadvantaged in any way in any potential future formal procurement. Commercial confidentiality will be respected. This notice does not represent a formal commitment by the Council to undertake a procurement procedure.


Please note that Reablement Services in Somerset will now be a separate tender and details of a provider engagement event are now available on a separate advert.