National Workload Action Group Secretariat and Lead Delivery Partner on Best Practice Guidance for Retention and Agency

Descriptions

This PIN is for market engagement only. It does not signify the commencement of any procurement process and does not constitute any commitment by the Department for Education. If the Department for Education decides to commence any procurement process as contemplated by this notice, a separate notice will be published at the relevant time. The requirements and values set out in this PIN may be subject to change. The children social care sector is facing significant social worker retention pressures and challenges with social worker recruitment agencies. To support the sector in its response to this, it is the Department for Education's intention to undertake a procurement exercise to appoint a suitably experienced organisation to deliver the following high level objectives relating to child and family social work: 1) deliver a secretariat role to convene a group of sector and practice experts to identify unnecessary workload drivers for social workers; 2) deliver the solutions recommended by the group; 3) produce tools and guidance to support Local Authorities with social worker retention; and 4) produce tools/guidance to support Local Authorities in the engagement of agency social workers. More detailed overview of the Required Services: As the lead organisation, act as a secretariat to bring together panel members that have been selected by the DfE to form a National Workload Action Group (NWAG) on a regular basis as determined by DfE. The purpose of the NWAG is to consider drivers of unnecessary workload and to develop solutions so that social workers have enough time to spend working directly with children and families. The lead organisation will be responsible for working with the NWAG to identify appropriate action/solutions/outputs that reduces workload. It will also be required to deliver the identified solutions and outputs from the NWAG (either by procuring 3rd parties or performing the work directly). Separate to the work of the NWAG, the same organisation would be required to: - Source and/or produce tools and guidance on areas that impact social worker retention to complement the Social Worker Employer Standards Health Check for example on wellbeing, supervision and effective workforce planning systems - Source and/or produce tools and guidance to support LAs in the engagement of agency social workers. To provide further information on the opportunity a market engagement webinar will be held on 8th February 2023 14:00 - 16:00. This will be an online event hosted through Microsoft Teams platform. This session will include a presentation at which representatives from the Department will provide information to potential suppliers about the proposed scope of the services and how we intend they will be procured. This will be followed by a Question-and-Answer session where potential suppliers will have the opportunity to ask questions of Departmental representatives.