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Our team of healthcare bid writers at Executive Compass are experienced in all aspects of domiciliary care tenders, having successfully secured the right contracts for our clients for over ten years.

Due to the highly competitive nature of domiciliary and homecare care contracts, having an in-depth knowledge of health and social care bid writing and best practice is crucial to secure contracts. Our experienced health and social care bid writers can help you win domiciliary care contracts that are right for your business.

With over 18.6% of the population aged 65 years or older, a continually aging population, and an increased focus placed on supporting people to continue living in the community rather than moving into residential or nursing care settings, tenders for care at home services are common across the UK.

Providers looking to offer these services via referrals from social care teams will ordinarily need to be on the relevant framework or dynamic purchasing system (DPS), meaning that a successful tender strategy can be essential for care at home providers to grow their business. Our health and social care team at Executive Compass can support you through every stage of the tendering process, delivering a tailored service to meet your needs.

Alongside ‘standard’ care at home services, providers might also bid to provide time-intensive reablement support, services within extra care settings, NHS-funded and commissioned continuing healthcare services and various other models of community-based care and support.  These services are very familiar to our health and social care team, with approximately 30% to 40% of all tenders written by our team related to health and social care. Our team therefore have an in-depth understanding of various domiciliary and homecare models, and the ambitions / priorities of buyers. For example, core topics such as person-centred support, reablement, and multidisciplinary support are confidently understood by our team, with specific methods and models then discussed with our clients and detailed in tender responses to demonstrate how our clients work, whilst reflecting the requirements of the buyer.

PQQ writing for domiciliary care

Completing a PQQ for domiciliary care sector can be challenging, and it is crucial  for progressing to the tender stage. Our PQQ writing team specialises in writing domiciliary care PQQs, delivering powerful responses that effectively display our clients’ capabilities. Find out more about PQQ writing for domiciliary care.

The domiciliary care tender process

Like most public sector procurement exercises, the tendering process for domiciliary care and homecare tenders follows a two-stage process:

  • Stage 1: Known as the selection questionnaire, SQ, or PQQ this stage focusses on the provision of company information, compliance checks, and experience. Specifically for homecare and domiciliary care tenders, this will normally include providing a CQC registration number / certificate and CQC rating, with some buyers requiring bidders to be rated ‘Good’ as a minimum to be considered.
  • Stage 2: only reviewed when bidders have passed stage 1, the process typically focusses on how the bidder will deliver the service, focusing on the person-centred nature of the service, ensuring continuity and delivery, and maintaining quality.

To maximise efficiencies, the process is regularly conducted as one procurement exercise, with stage 2 only reviewed when a bidder is successful at stage 1.

At Executive Compass, our team is highly experienced in supporting organisations at both stages with bid management, compliance checks, and full bid writing support to ensure a high quality, competitive submission.

Our domiciliary care tender experience

With a dedicated team of health and social care bid writers, Executive Compass is perfectly placed to write winning care at home tenders. We estimate that we have supported providers to bid successfully for homecare contracts, frameworks or DPSs in almost every local authority area in the UK, including every county council and city council in England, Scotland and Wales. Key successes include:

  • Pan-London AQP for domiciliary care – a high-profile and competitive framework; we supported numerous bidders to gain places and subsequently grow their businesses through home care, discharge to access and NHS continuing health care referrals
  • Essex County Council – numerous providers supported to gain places on the Live at Home framework
  • Leicestershire County Council – a large and complex bid, resulting in award of a place on the highly competitive framework
  • West Sussex County Council – a successful submission for the WSCC Care at Home framework, with highly positive evaluation feedback and scoring
  • Aberdeen City Council – supporting a complex consortium of private-sector and third-sector bidders to secure sole supplier status across the entire city of Aberdeen
  • Glasgow City Council – supporting providers to achieve places on the prestigious Care at Home framework, including securing a rank of 1 or 2 for providers’ chosen categories and service user groups
  • Extra care – countless winning submissions for the provision of care and support in extra care housing schemes throughout the UK, including services in the North West, the Midlands and London.

Further contracts we have secured for our clients can be found here.

Key focus areas for domiciliary care tenders

Care at home is a rapidly growing service and, to support our clients to continue to produce competitive, persuasive and high-scoring submissions, we remain at the cutting edge of developments in the sector. Over the years, we have supported our clients as commissioners’ focus moves away from time-and-task approaches and towards a greater emphasis on outcomes-led thinking and working, person-centricity, empowerment and joined-up working in communities.

Whilst our particular approach on each occasion is fully tailored to the unique priorities of the commissioner and the strengths, assets and models employed by the provider, common themes in domiciliary care tenders include:

  • Person-centred practice – beginning with person-centred planning but then moving into how those plans are converted into delivery, we emphasise methodologies and approaches that ensure each service user’s individuality is recognised and that their care and support is right for them
  • Outcomes-focused working – commissioners expect high levels of detail, clearly outlining how meaningful outcomes will be collaboratively defined and how, in practice, providers will provide care in an enabling way such that outcomes are achieved
  • Choice, dignity and control – working with people in an empowering way that recognises their autonomy
  • Safeguarding – balancing the tenets of empowerment and enablement with the duty to safeguard and protect people from avoidable harm.

Our team can provide your business with support and advice on all aspects of your tender response, ensuring you are successfully covering key criteria.

Challenges in the industry

The sector faces national challenges, and these often translate into challenging criteria within the tender process. We work together with bidders to create solution-focused responses, covering topics such as:

  • Recruitment – providing commissioners with the required reassurance that homecare services can be effectively resourced, creatively overcoming sector-wide recruitment challenges
  • Partnership working – with an increased focus on prevention-based approaches to enable service users to remain in their own home, we work with bidders to propose community-focused services which align with the prevent, reduce, delay model laid out in the Care Act 2014 in England, and similar guidelines and legislation across the rest of the UK
  • Social value/community benefits – criteria relating to social value are becoming increasingly prevalent, and are also carrying increasingly high weightings. Thanks to support from our dedicated division, The Social Value Practice, we can provide tailored guidance and support, specifically for bidders in the health and social care sector, when responding to social value criteria to develop and evidence measures local to their homecare services.

The changing landscape of health and social care means that bidders need to remain continually aware of the latest challenges, as well as the latest opportunities. As much as 40% of Executive Compass’s work comes from health and social care tenders in a typical month, meaning that we have the requisite knowledge, experience and capability to guide you every step of the way.

How Can Executive Compass Help?

Our dedicated team of healthcare bid writers are here to help your business successfully bid for the right domiciliary contracts. With over 10 years’ experience in the healthcare industry, we can help your business navigate the tender process, providing unique support and advice that is tailored to your needs.

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