Award of EAC Support - Learning and Skills Development Programme

Description

The Strategic childcare plan 2022 to 2026 outlines the Scottish Government’s approach for the remainder of this Parliament to deliver on its childcare policies.The School Age Childcare Delivery Framework further sets out the action areas and approach we are taking to expand access to school age childcare for those who need it most.School age childcare (SACC) comprises childcare and activities which happen before school, after school and during the school holidays, which allow parents and carers to work, train, study or rest, and which give children the chance to play, socialise and develop skills and interests. It is currently provided by regulated childcare services and childminders, and we know that families may make use of specialist children’s activity providers and informal care from friends and family to meet their childcare needs.The School Age Childcare Division takes a person-centered and place-based approach to the programme’s work. By this, we mean that the childcare system, and the services which are part of this system, are co-designed with the people who use them, as well as those who deliver and support them. The design of the system takes account of what is important to communities and makes use of all of the existing services in communities which could provide childcare options for families.The 2023 Programme for Government announced an ambitious, evidence-based set of proposals to expand high quality, funded childcare, particularly for low-income families. This includes a continued commitment to building a system of school age childcare, with a focus on our six early adopter communities. These proposals recognize that affordable and accessible childcare supports employment and the economy, and that secure and sustainable employment helps lift families out of poverty.The commitment to focus on our six early adopter communities would mean expanding into new communities in Shetland and Fife and would also expand to include younger children (from 0-5 years). This commitment was backed by a £16 million investment announced by First Minister John Swinney on 22 May 2024.Due to the commitment expanding to include younger children, the work now expands across the School Age Childcare Division and the Early Learning and Childcare Division, both of which sit in the Directorate for Children and Families within Scottish Government.We plan to convene the Early Adopter Communities as a learning partnership and provide a programme of learning & skills development in order to support them to embed our approach principles, equip them build on their engagement and co-design to date, and identify and share emerging learning and practice with each other and with the school age childcare programme. This invitation to tender is for the design and delivery of the the Learning & Skills Development programme.. Suppliers will be invited separately to tender for a contract to plan and facilitate the Learning Partnership. The two contracts will be aligned.Section 2 – Background and ContextThe Early Adopter Communities (EACs) were established in 2022 to support expanded access to childcare places for low-income families through the creation and provision of services within deprived communities in Clackmannanshire, Dundee, Glasgow and Inverclyde. The EACs are working with communities to understand families’ needs (with children from early years to the end of primary), develop better local systems of childcare to meet those needs, and support parents to better access existing entitlements to childcare subsidies through Universal Credit and Tax-Free Childcare. A key focus of this approach is to test change. In doing so, we are learning more about what works to deliver childcare for families in communities that need it most. Currently around 600 children from 500 families are being supported through our EACs.On 22 May 2024, the First Minister announced a new investment of £16 million over two years within six early adopter community projects to tackle poverty and help families give their children the best start in life by expanding access to childcare services. The EAC projects will now expand into new communities in Fife and Shetland and will support families with children from early years to the end of primary school.The Scottish Government is committed to sharing learning across the early adopter community network and with all Local Authorities, to ensure we support future policy development at a national level.We have asked the early adopter community project leads to embed our programme’s approach principles into their work. This will require the EACs to build on their engagement to date with parents, carers, children and childcare providers and ensure that all engagement undertaken is legal, ethical and inclusive.The EACs have been asked to demonstrate how their project has ensured local service delivery meets user needs and the impact that the Project has had on local families and communities as a whole. The EACs have committed to working with the Scottish Government and any contracted evaluators to support evaluation work and begin to collect monitoring and evaluation data and information at the earliest possible point.We have also asked the EACs to integrate place-based work to design a digital service into their work.To support the EACs to deliver their workplans and ensure that their work can inform the wider SACC programme, we plan to:• Convene and facilitate the EACs as a Learning Partnership through the procurement of specialist support – a separate but aligned contract.• Provide a bespoke Learning and Skills Development Programme on participatory and design approaches aligned with our programme approach principles and the Scottish Approach to Service Design through the procurement of specialist support – this contract.The Learning Skills and Development Programme will run in parallel with a separate but aligned contract to deliver the Learning Partnership which the EAC project leads will be involved in. It will be important that the Learning and Skills Development Programme interacts with and complements the Learning Partnership. Scottish Government will support interaction between the two projects, and more details can be found in the Interdependencies section of this document. With regard to the provision of a Learning and Skills Development Programme, we aim to do this by offering a programme which supports the EACs to :• Develop their skills and capacity in order to further embed our person-centred and place-based approach at a local level.• Explore key themes identified in the programme e.g. working in complexity and system change and the approaches needed to work in this context.• Be equipped to undertake mixed method evidence gathering in their local communities to inform the ongoing development and delivery of their projects to inform the development and delivery of childcare in their communities, and the ongoing policy development for early learning and school age childcare.• Be equipped to undertake or work with others to undertake legal, ethical and inclusive engagement and co-design.• This programme will include a planning phase and evaluation phase.The contract for the Learning Partnership is subject to a separate tender process which will be published in parallel to this one, and the SG project team expect that the contractors will work in close partnership to best ensure alignment with the two programmes of work and ensure a seamless experience for the EACs which maximises learning potential.The Learning Partnership will offer the EACs structured opportunities to:• Work together with psychological safety, trust and openness and a will to surface and share learning together, for the benefit of the wider programme.• Identify insights from their projects and share with the other EACs, integrating learning across the group and back into the ELC and SACC divisions in SG.• Reflect on the Learning and Skills Development Programme the EACs will be participating in and explore how best to integrate this into their projects.• Identify and explore differences in approach to meet the needs of diverse communities.• Identify the challenges and opportunities presented by design and digital approaches and identify key learning from this.• Access peer support from other projects to address local challenges.• Build a body of knowledge that can inform other all age childcare community level projects in future.The overall aims of both contracts are to:• Build capacity in the EACs to operationalise the programme approach principles.• Convene the EAC leads as a learning network, to further inform and embed their understanding of engagement and co-design.• Provide an opportunity for the EAC leads to share progress and learning, clarify expectations, explore common challenges and strengths, and respond to any changes to the programme as it progresses.• Begin to build a shared understanding and capacity across the EACs of the key defining features of the programme that we want to implement in our approach, including high quality legal ethical and inclusive engagement, design thinking, systems change, collective leadership and ethnographic approaches.Section 3 – Scope /Statement of RequirementOverviewAt this stage, the SG project team intend that there will be three distinct phases of work delivered by the contract. These are summarised below:1. Review and Planning - Understand the experience of the EACs to date with regard to engagement and participation and any wider evidence gathering they have undertaken to understand the needs of their communities with regard to all age childcare to identify learning needs in order to plan an approach to further develop their capacity and skills to undertake this work.2. Design and deliver a programme of bespoke learning and skills development activities for the Early Adopter Community leads and others as appropriate, gathering feedback from participants throughout in order to evaluate the impact of the Learning and Skills Development programme3. Synthesise evaluation undertaken throughout the programme and outline recommendations to support future development at a national level.Phase 1 – Review and Planning will take place October - November 2024. The purpose of this phase is to work with policy officials and the EAC project leads to:• Meet with the EAC project leads to review the previous engagement and participation work undertaken by the projects, and insights and data gathered, to better understand the EACs’ learning needs to inform plans for the provision of a bespoke programme of learning and skills development to meet their needs.• Review the engagement and co-design undertaken by the SACC programme with the EACs to date, to ensure that the learning and skills development programme builds on and aligns with the programme approach.• Work with the project team to ensure that the learning and skills development programme takes account of recommendations provided in phases 1 and 2 of our People Panel Co-design Discovery Project with parents, carers and providers of SACC and the design principles and identified user needs for parents and carers, children and providers of SACC.• Work with the EAC learning partnership facilitators to agree an approach to support alignment between the facilitated Learning Partnership and Learning and Skills development programme in order to ensure that learning priorities that emerge through the work of the Learning Partnership can inform the Learning and Skills Development programme, to embed learning and ensure that learning can be shared dynamically with SACC and ELC divisions in SG.• Work with Scottish Government analysts and/or contracted evaluators for the EAC programme to agree an approach and ensure ongoing alignment between the Learning and Skills Development Programme and Scottish Government monitoring and evaluation work.• Design and agree with the SG project team, a programme of learning and skills development for the EAC leads and any other relevant individuals identified by the EAC leads. This should include participatory and ethnographic approaches and co-design and should align with the Scottish Approach to Service Design.Phase 2 - Delivery will take place between December 2024 and August 2025. The purpose of this phase is to deliver a programme of learning for the EACs to:• Inform the EACs’ engagement and co-design work with parents, carers, children and childcare providers.• Equip the EACs to undertake mixed method evidence gathering in their local communities to inform the development and delivery of all age childcare in the EAC communities, and the ongoing policy development for both ELC and SACC.• Ensure that the EACs have a clear understanding of the themes and approaches central to the programme, and how they might integrate and support these in their work. This should include system change, working in complexity and place-based approaches.• Inform the content and themes explored in the learning partnership sessions the EACs will be participating in.Phase 3 - Synthesis of evaluation will take place between September and October 2025. The purpose of this phase is to draw upon the evaluation materials that have been undertaken over the course of the programme to evaluate the learning programme as a whole, in order to:• Understand the learning and skills development needed to equip a place-based and person-centred local childcare design.• Identify the challenges and opportunities of mixed method evidence gathering in designing place-based and person-centred local childcare solutions, and what is required to equip the EACs to undertake this work.• Provide recommendations to guide the further development of local place-based and person-centred childcare delivery.• Contribute to our commitment to share learning with all Local Authorities, to support future development of SACC and ELC at a national level.The timescales for the contract sit within the 2-year funding commitment made to the Early Adopter Community projects, which ends in March 2026.It is anticipated that the overall cost to deliver this programme of work will not exceed £49,999.Breakdown of workWe require our supplier to work with the SG team, the Learning Partnership contract-holders, and the EACs project leads, to do the following:Review and Planning1. Agree an overall plan and approach to the project2. Review engagement and co-design undertaken by the EACs to date and insights gathered.3. Work with the learning partnership facilitators to agree an approach to align the two programmes of work.4. Prepare and schedule a programme of learning and skills development inputs.Delivery5. Facilitate a programme of learning and skills development sessions for the EAC leads and any other relevant people identified by the EACs.6. Provide progress updates to the SG project team throughout the delivery period.7. Embed evaluation as part of the delivery process throughout the programmeSynthesis of Evaluation8. Undertake qualitative interviews with the EAC project leads and policy team to inform evaluation.9. Provide an evaluation report, including recommendations for future delivery at a national level.These requirements are explained in more detail below.Plan and approach• The SG project team and the suppliers of both contracts will attend a joint project kick-off meeting.• At this meeting, we will make sure that the supplier understands the deliverables and has the information needed to plan the delivery of the project, including information about the Scottish Approach to Service Design, and the School Age Childcare unit’s programme approach principles.• We will use the meeting to agree measures of success and indicators of impact for the deliverables, such as the evidence gathered on the impact of learning and the difference it has made, the sign-off process for the final report.• The project team will arrange for the supplier to meet with the EAC project leads to consider their learning needs. The EAC leads will share their progress to date in the participatory elements of the projects.• The project team will arrange for the supplier to meet with the supplier who will convene and facilitate the EAC Learning Partnership, to ensure that plans for the two contracts are aligned and that a plan can be agreed for collaboration and information sharing between the two programmes and as seamless an experience as is possible for the EACs.• Following these meetings, the supplier will provide and agree a plan for delivery of a programme of learning and skills development for the EACs. This plan will include agreement on the number of learning sessions required, the themes and approaches to be covered, agreement on the most appropriate means of delivery (in person or virtual) and agreement on the evaluation approach to be taken.• The supplier(s) should deploy an emergent model and be open to adapting plans as the work progresses in order to take account of and respond to feedback from participants and insights gathered through the Learning Partnership workshops.Delivery of Programme of Learning and Skills Development• The supplier will deliver a series of learning and skills development workshops for the EAC project leads and any other individuals identified by the EAC leads and agreed with the SG project team and supplier.• The SG project team will provide logistical support to arrange workshops and ensure that workshop materials reach participants. If events are to be held virtually, we may require the supplier to recommend or provide access to suitable whiteboard software.• While we expect that a programme is agreed at the outset of the delivery programme, we would like to build in flexibility to adapt to the needs of the participants and therefore are open to changes to the programme, where agreed with the project team. This should also be informed by and agreed with the learning partnership facilitator.• Based on the plan, the supplier(s) should facilitate learning events as agreed with the EACs and the project team.• We are flexible on the number of learning events/workshops held and the number of participants attending each.• Learning content is intended to equip the EAC projects to embed our person-centred and place-based approach in their work within their communities and equip them to undertake mixed method evidence gathering which can be used to inform the design, delivery and evaluation of their projects and the services they commission. It may therefore include content on the themes of, for example, collective leadership, service design, co-production, ethnography, action research and / other recognised approaches to community and citizen participation.• It is important that learning content includes close consideration of engagement approaches most likely to be effective in low-income families, and those families who are most at risk of child poverty.• It is also important that learning content includes consideration of how best to engage with marginalised communities, some of whom are under-represented in our engagement to date. This should be informed by an intersectional approach.• The SG project team will work with the supplier, where necessary, to design and approve the workshop activities.Evaluation and Recommendations• The supplier is expected to gather feedback throughout the programme from learning participants in order to evaluate the impact of the Learning and Skills Development programme. This should include qualitative evidence shared by the participants.• The supplier is expected to collaborate with the Learning Partnership facilitation team to inform the evaluation approach and ensure that insights gathered from those workshops can inform the evaluation.• The supplier should work with the SG project team to devise an effective approach to communicating these findings to a range of audiences. It is anticipated that the set of materials required may include:o a written report which can be used as the basis for communication with Ministers, SG officials and policy stakeholderso a slide deck which can be used as the basis for further design and delivery of learning programmes to equip other local authorities to take a similar approach to developing a person-centred and place-based approach to designing and delivering all age childcare within communities.o The SG SACC team would be happy to discuss other materials such as animations, videos, or suitable images, so long as they are accessible.• The supplier should also produce a report on the methods and approach used to enable knowledge transfer to the SG team, capture lessons learned, and provide a template for others who wish to work in a similar way.Responsibilities of the supplier• The project team is looking for a supplier who can offer consistency in the individuals that facilitate the learning offer, to create a sense of psychological safety and trust, so that knowledge is retained, and quality is consistent across the programme delivered.• The project team is open to the supplier bringing in additional specialist facilitation to contribute to the learning and development programme should this be required. Costs would however be met by the supplier from the contract budget.• Travel and subsistence to where required to attend the workshops (for the supplier and for participants) is included in the total budget.• The costs of any equipment and materials required for delivering content to participants is also included in the total budget.• The supplier is responsible for ensuring that learning sessions are accessible, including ad hoc requests from participants (e.g. colour blindness, visual impairments, hearing impairments, mobility etc.) and the supplier will not disclose the individual’s needs to any party outside of the project team.