Foster Care Tenders

Who Commissions Foster Care Tenders?

Local authorities are responsible, as corporate parents, for commissioning of foster care tenders, ensuring that Looked After Children (LAC) are cared for in stable and safe placements.  Fostering placements are classified as non-residential, so you may want to search for more information on children’s residential services with or without education.

Typically, authorities will seek to set up Frameworks, either under their own steam or via a consortia commissioning model, where a group of local authorities works together to commission a wider regional framework.  The latter will see successful providers awarded a place on a regional database which can be accessed by participating authorities.  

Foster Care Terminology

Alternative terminology used to describe fostering tenders can include:

• External Placements for Looked After Children (LAC) tenders;
• Children in Care tenders.

What Is Normally Involved In A Foster Care Tender?

As with all social care tenders, foster care tenders will usually focus on quality.  It’s this that is consistently the most important factor in any social care tender, with the real work involved in the writing up of, sometimes, complex and challenging method statements.

It is the method statements that gives a bidder their credibility, allowing them to demonstrate their experience and where they add value.  Some key themes include safeguarding, placement stability, person-centred and outcomes focused delivery, feedback mechanisms and service improvement, managing transitions out of care, challenging behaviour, recruitment and monitoring of foster carers and staff and child sexual exploitation policies.

Compliance is also an essential element, and providers can expect to have their policies and procedures rigorously scrutinised, along with their registration with the necessary regulatory body, e.g. Ofsted, and any current ratings.  Bidders are often required to possess a minimum rating in order to be deemed compliant.

We will quite often expect to see stipulations relating to the location of individual placements, with most specifications stating that these should ideally be allocated within certain geographical boundaries.

How Can Your Tender Team Help With Writing Your Tender?

Having accumulated years of experience of writing social care tenders our professional team has covered the spectrum of this sector and have an enviable track record securing wins in this category.

Need help writing your Foster Care tender?

Your Tender Team specialises in delivering expert tendering services to health and social care providers, and our FULL TENDER WRITE includes:

• Dedicated support from an experienced Bid Manager.
• The full write of your bid.
• Production of a ‘Shopping List’ of additional items required for submission, e.g. financial information.
• An independent evaluation of the finished tender.
• Managing clarifications on your behalf, both leading up to and post-submission.
• Managing submission.

Contract lifetimes will vary, with some lasting up to 10 years if extended, so if your bid is unsuccessful, you could be left out in the cold until the tender is released again.  Putting the appropriate resources into your bid can make all of the difference. Check out our latest WIN RATE to see how successful we’ve been over recent months.

If you would like us to quote you for how much our Full Tender Write service is based on the tender you wish to bid, please use our ‘Get A Quote’ tab on the right handside of the screen now.  

Have A Professional Tender Writer Review Your Tender Before You Submit It

If you wish to write your own bid, we can support you at every stage of your response. Our REVIEW & EVALUATION service will help by:

• Supplying you with a breakdown the tender, structuring your responses;
• Suggest content themes based on our experience and the tender;
• Offer feedback and guidance on your written answers. 

Use our ‘Get A Quote’ tab today and one of our team members will be in touch with a quotation. 

Your Tender Team In The Press

Don’t just take our word for it! Your Tender Team have been in the press a fair bit recently. Check out one of the articles on Business Live HERE.