Children's Centres VEAT Notice

Concepts

• health and social work
• maidstone
• children
• integrated family support services
• family hubs
• kent county council
• families
• kent
• family hub services
• early help

Location

Maidstone

Description

Kent County Council is seeking to directly award two contracts for provision of family hubs in Margate, Thanet and Sheerness, Sheppey in the county of Kent. The Family Hub concept is to provide families with a single access point to integrated family support services. Services will include those that we recognise in Kent as Early Help, linking across Children, Young People and Education, Public Health and the NHS with emphasis on being a one stop shop for help and support for families with social, emotional, physical and financial needs.

Total Quantity or Scope

The procurement process will be a negotiated procedure without a call for competition. There is a need to award contracts in these areas for 18 months, with an optional break clause after 12 months whilst the wider scoping is undertaken of Family Hub services in Kent and this opportunity will then be competitively tendered.

Award Detail

CPV Codes

• 85000000 - Health and social work services

Indicators

Legal Justification

Kent County Council is seeking to directly award two contracts to Millmead Children’s Centre Partnership Ltd and Children and Families Ltd CIC. This is based on regulation 32 (2) (b) (ii) of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. (2) The negotiated procedure without prior publication may be used for public works contracts, public supply contracts and public service contracts in any of the following cases:— (b) where the works, supplies or services can be supplied only by a particular economic operator for any of the following reasons:— (ii) competition is absent for technical reasons, Specifically, that there is a need to secure the delivery of Family Hub services in these areas because The Lower Super Output Areas (LSOA) are in two of the most deprived areas in Kent and nationally. Deprivation data from 2019 shows that one of the LSOA’s within Sheerness, is 48th most deprived LSOA nationally (out of a total of 32,844 LSOA’s nationally) making it within the top 0.2 % of most deprived LSOA’s in the country. Similarly, one of the LSOA’s within the Dane Valley Ward is the 8th most deprived within Kent (423rd nationally) and nationally sitting within the top 1.3% of most deprived LSOA’s. The location of the two commissioned sites as highlighted above are in areas of high deprivation and as such have a high level of need for support services. It is believed that there is currently no other available provision that could be in place prior to the contracts ending in March 2024 to support this need in these deprived areas. Continuing to pilot the Family Hub model in these areas, while the model is finalised is critical to ensuring that the deprivation is not compounded and that the Council is able to gain further insights to aid the development of the model.

Other Information

Please note that the date stated in V.2.1 are indicative. At the time of publishing this notice no contracts have as yet been entered in to. Please note that the contract values published in V.2.4 are for 18 month contracts. The 12 month values are: Millmead - £233,233.81 Seashells - £214,517.27