Evaluation Organisations to support the evaluation of the Children's Social Care Innovation Programme / Partners in Practice

The Department for Education (DfE) proposes to tender for the services of up to 18 organisations to undertake evaluations as part of the Children's Social Care Innovation Programme (IP) and Partners in Practice (PiP).

Evaluations will be thematically focused, looking at a group of projects and testing a number of hypotheses under headline themes. Programme wide evaluation will be overseen by an evaluation coordinator (a separate PIN will be published for this work).

We intend to publish this opportunity through the Education & Children's Social Care Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) via the Redimo 2 e-procurement system on Monday 5 December 2016. See below for more information regarding the e-procurement system.

Background

The Innovation Programme was launched in October 2013 to act as a catalyst for developing more effective ways of supporting vulnerable children. In its first two years the IP has supported 53 projects with £110m, operating across 59% of all top tier local authorities and involving over 120 public, private and voluntary sector organisations.

Partners in Practice initiative, initially agreed by the child protection taskforce, and announced by the Prime Minister in December 2015 will model excellence and innovation in the delivery of children's social care services.

Evaluation

Evaluation is a core component of the IP. We need to undertake high quality evaluations and produce compelling and accessible outputs for practitioners, commissioners and service leaders.

The evaluation strategy consists of:

• an evaluation coordinator primarily responsible for setting and assuring high evaluation standards, overseeing project evaluations, and bringing together data from project evaluations to demonstrate progress towards the Innovation Programme objectives; and

• individual evaluation organisations allocated to themes and ready to work with funded LAs and organisations to evaluate what works, why, and in what circumstances.

We expect to appoint evaluation organisations on a two-year contract, to run from January 2017 to January 2019 with flexibility to extend for a further two years.

Estimated Total Value (exc VAT):

We expect total evaluation spend to be up to £4m for IP and up to £1m for PiPs. Amounts allocated to the evaluation of particular themes will be dependent on the number of projects operating under the themes and the size of those projects.

See 'Attachments' for further information.

Additional information: Suppliers interested in bidding for this work will need to register on Redimo 2. Redimo 2 is used for contracting for most works, goods and services that are awarded following an electronic competitive tendering process. Registration allows organisations both to gain membership to the Education & Children's Social Care Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) and e-tender for other opportunities published by the DfE and its executive agencies.

Guidance on how to register and information regarding the ECSC DPS is available on the .gov website at www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-education/about/procurement.

This opportunity will be tendered through the DPS via the category 'ECSC05: Evaluator'. Please ensure you have successfully gained DPS membership and selected this category by COP on Friday 25 November 2016 to prevent missing out on this opportunity.

Additional information - Partners in Practice

Partners in Practice initiative, initially agreed by the child protection taskforce, and announced by the Prime Minister in December 2015 will model excellence and innovation in the delivery of children's social care services.

The aims of the Partners in Practice programme are:

• Understanding high performance: exploring what drives current performance within the Partners in Practice.

• Supporting wider improvement: helping other LAs progress beyond minimum compliance or expectations.

• Building on existing performance: working with Partners in Practice to explore what it takes to go from 'good' to 'excellent' and what Government needs to do to facilitate that move more widely.

At a national level, this will help the government develop a better understanding of how high performing LA's work. This can then be used in a framework to support the development of other LAs.

At a local level, the PiP programme aims to encourage LA's to do more amongst themselves to innovate by giving LA's a 'testing space' to try new ideas.

Over time, we would expect to see Partners in Practice model good practice, and share learning and support the wider sector, thus embedding sector-led improvement with some similarities to the 'teaching schools' model.

The Department is proposing 2 strands of the programme will require evaluation: sector improvement and freedoms and flexibilities.

Other information

Please see the Department's Delivery partner's website for more information on the Innovation Programme www.springconsortium.com

Email: cs.innovationprogramme@education.gov.uk for queries on the Innovation Programme /Partners in Practice and Evaluation.

Email: Commercial.contactpoint@education.gov.uk for Redimo / DPS queries.