SOL30057 - Market Engagement - Taxi Services for Solihull Childrens Services

Solihull MBC is inviting interested taxi service providers to engage with this questionnaire to help us develop our future tendering strategy.

Aligned with our practice framework, Connecting Families, we aim to enable families to thrive and young people to be independent. This includes supporting families to provide their own transport when this is needed. However, on the occasions when this is not possible, Children’s Services shall arrange safe and appropriate transport so that children, young people and their parents / carers can be where they need to be. This can be:

• Planned regular journeys for children (e.g. school, college, alternative provision)
• Unplanned occasional journeys for children or relatives (e.g. contact meetings)

Children’s Social Work teams arrange regular journeys per term‑time with half of those journeys requiring an escort, provided by the taxi firm. On occasions we may require a specialist taxi vehicle to meet needs. Except for one case, these journeys were to or from educational settings. In addition, there are ad‑hoc journeys for children—and occasionally for a parent carer—which may involve travel to schools or other destinations.