Agency Staff to provide Care and Support for Children with Complex Needs

Cornwall Council has statutory responsibilities to help and protect children, including providing practical help, care and support to children and their families as part of support plans to enable children to remain safely at home in the care of their family, and providing children with an alternative suitable home where it is not safe for them to remain in the care of their family.

We are seeking providers who can provide intensive and specialist staffing where necessary to effectively support children with complex care and support needs. This includes supporting children and young people in significant distress and crisis, such as:

• Providing practical support in the community and family homes, to enable families to stay together and prevent family breakdown.
• Working alongside Cornwall children’s services staff and care providers to provide supplementary care and support for children, where there are significant safeguarding concerns and/or a risk of placement breakdown.
• Same day responses to enable us to respond positively and proactively to changing need and children and families in crisis.
• Providing additional support to children and young people where there are significant worries about their emotional wellbeing, which may be communicated through behaviours that challenge and behaviours that place the child at risk.
• Working flexibly supporting children and families out of office hours, including evenings, weekends, and overnight.

Cornwall Council does not currently have a Dynamic Purchase System (DPS) for agency staffing for children with additional care and support needs. Therefore, each individual agency staffing arrangement is agreed on a spot purchasing basis. Given the specialist nature of the agency staffing needed, Cornwall Council understands that the provider market is limited and in order to secure the highest quality staffing at the most competitive price, we need to explore alternative options with our providers to achieve this.

Please return your completed questionnaire by 16:00 hours on Monday 7th July 2025 via the Due North/Pro Contract messaging service