Agency Staff to provide Care and Support for Children with Complex Needs

Descriptions

Cornwall Council has statutory responsibilities to help and protect children, including providing practical help, care and support to children and their families as part of support plans to enable children to remain safely at home in the care of their family, and providing children with an alternative suitable home where it is not safe for them to remain in the care of their family.

We are seeking providers who can provide intensive and specialist staffing where necessary to effectively support children with complex care and support needs. This includes supporting children and young people in significant distress and crisis, such as:

• Providing practical support in the community and family homes, to enable families to stay together and prevent family breakdown.

• Working alongside Cornwall children's services staff and care providers to provide supplementary care and support for children, where there are significant safeguarding concerns and/or a risk of placement breakdown.

• Same day responses to enable us to respond positively and proactively to changing need and children and families in crisis.

• Providing additional support to children and young people where there are significant worries about their emotional wellbeing, which may be communicated through behaviours that challenge and behaviours that place the child at risk.

• Working flexibly supporting children and families out of office hours, including evenings, weekends, and overnight.

Engagement

Cornwall Council is conducting a soft market assessment to gain an understanding of the potential level of interest across the Voluntary, NHS, Independent and Private Sector for the provision of agency staff where required for a child or young person under 18 years where there is a need for additional care and support as part of a coordinated multi-disciplinary care plan. It is intended that the responses supplied will enable the Council to develop a business proposal prior to re-commissioning local services. Any such proposal would be subject to the development and approval of a business case, and, as such, this exercise implies no commercial commitment. This is not a formal tender document, and all costings submitted are deemed hypothetical but will support us in identifying the best option for Cornwall. Participation of this soft market assessment will not prejudice suppliers participating in any future procurement. If you are interested in this area of service provision and also helping with our assessment of the market, please complete the “Information Required” section at the end of this notice along with any additional information you consider to be relevant and return this via the Due North / Supplying the South-West messaging system by 16:00 on Monday 7th July 2025.