Tender for The Provision of Outreach Support for Children and Young People with Difficulties in Social Communication and Interaction.

Sefton Council intends to secure the services of an experienced and suitably qualified organisation to deliver outreach support services for children and young people who experience difficulties with social communication, social interaction and/or who have been identified as having an autism spectrum disorder, ASD. This outreach service will work in collaboration with Sefton SEN and Inclusion Service to provide support for practitioners in mainstream schools and other educational settings in order to remove barriers to learning and optimise the educational outcomes for children and young people experiencing these types of difficulties.

Current arrangements for the provision of outreach support for children and young people with social communication, social interaction and/or ASD are supplemented through the use of an external provider, Autism Initiatives. This educational outreach service is delivered through a service level agreement and focuses on the development of bespoke packages of support for individual pupils that are implemented, for the main part, by school based staff. This service is an important element of the Sefton Local Offer and is available to children and young people living in Sefton across the borough. It ensures that families can choose to have their child's needs supported in their local school, which is in line with the general presumption in law of mainstream education in relation to decisions about where children and young people with special education needs should be educated.

The existing arrangements will remain in place until 1st September 2016, by which time it is anticipated that Sefton Council will have awarded a new contract for an outreach service for schools, to support children and young people experiencing difficulties with social communication, social interaction and/or who have ASD, that meets local needs. The procurement and award of the contract will be achieved through an OJEU Light-Touch Regime tender process. Submissions will be invited from suitably experienced and qualified organisations to deliver this service as the sole contractor.