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.