Southampton City Council Social Care Transformation

The Authority is seeking a strategic partner to work with the Wellbeing & Housing, and Children & Learning Directorates to identify, design and enhance opportunities for long term efficiencies and cost savings.

Locally and nationally demand for social care services is increasing. We are not unique with rising costs and funding challenges, with high care costs, high numbers of Children Looked After and increasing SEND demand, the risk to the sustainability of the organisation is significant.

The Authority are seeking to engage specialty support to undertake a diagnostic and subsequently if required an implementation phase will deliver cashable bankable savings for the Authority.

Diagnostic

Activities to be undertaken as part of the Diagnostic aligned to the defined objectives should include:

• Identification, prioritisation and detailed understanding of the areas of potential improvement using existing data, live studies and discussion with members of the SCC team
• Readiness for change assessment in order to understand the capability, capacity and specific barriers that would need to be overcome through any associated implementation
• Quantification of the potential cashable and non-financial benefits that exist within each opportunity area and detail of the specific operational problems that need to be addressed to deliver this
• Development of a project plan that is integrated with the SCC transformation plan and governance structure ("Our Tomorrow") and has clear performance targets, together with resource requirements, owners, and timescales agreed with the management team
• Identification of the dependencies required to enable delivery in the defined timescales and at the level of financial benefits articulated.
• Identification of opportunities to work with and/or train SCC staff as part of the implementation process including knowledge building across the wider trans-formation programme.
• Links any vision for change directly to the organisational and directorate roadmaps.
  • Rate at which improvement is expected to be made, including when cashable benefits can be expected to be realised
  • Source of outcome and financial improvement

Implementation

The implementation phase of the work would be focused on implementing the operational efficiency improvements and redesigned services/operating models as outlined in the objectives as further ratified during the diagnostic and agreed in an updated specification document. The implementation resource plans must include an indication of client-side project and operational resource requirements and clarity on handover and knowledge transfer approaches.

Phase 2 implementation will occur if required and will be in line with the commercial model for costs identified within the tender response by the provider. The contract length takes into account the initial term along with total potential extension period of 18 months + 48 months.