Award of EAC Support - Learning Partnership

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 people-centred 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 recognise 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 & 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 planning, facilitation and evaluation of the EACs Learning Partnership. Suppliers will be invited separately to tender for a contract to design and deliver the Learning & Skills Development programme. The two contracts will be aligned.Section 2 – Background & 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 & 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 – this 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.The Learning Partnership will run in parallel with a separate but aligned contract to deliver the Learning and Skills Development Programme which the EAC project leads and other local stakeholders will attend. It will be important that the Learning Partnership programme interacts with and complements the Learning and Skills Development Programme. Scottish Government will expect close partnership between the two projects, and more details can be found in the Interdependencies section of this document.With regard to the Learning Partnership, we aim to do this by offering structured and facilitated 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.We expect that the Learning Partnership will take a recognised approach to the facilitation of regular workshops and learning sessions. These will build from the insight and experience of the EACs and should be aligned with place-based, people-centred work. The approaches used may draw upon systems and complexity thinking as context. Some potential approaches could include Action Inquiry, Story-Telling and Listening, Coaching and the use of creative and reflective practices. The programme will include a planning phase and an evaluation phase.The contract for the Learning and Skills Development Programme 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 and Skills Development Programme will provide an opportunity for the EACs to:• Develop their skills and capacity in order to further embed our people-centred & place-based approach at a local level.• Explore key themes identified in the programme e.g. working in complexity & system change, and the approaches needed to working 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.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 key defining features 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 School Age Childcare Unit intend that there will be three distinct phases of work delivered by the contract. These are summarised below:1. Review & Planning - Work with the SG project team and EAC project leads to understand the experience of the EACs to date and their needs and interests, in order to plan an approach to providing structured opportunities to collaborate and share learning with each other and with SG ELC and SACC divisions through the Learning Partnership.2. Design & deliver a programme of facilitated workshops and learning sessions for the Early Adopter Community leads and other relevant participants from the wider EAC, feeding back to SG ELC and SACC divisions throughout. These should be structured around themes agreed with the EAC leads and SG project team, and should be open to change in response to emerging insights.3. Gather and synthesise feedback from the Learning Partnership participants throughout the programme, in order to evaluate the impact of their participation in the Partnership on their projects. The supplier should ensure this is communicated appropriately in a format / format accessible to a range of audiences outlined by the SG project team. Provide recommendations to support future development at a national level. In this third phase the contractor will work with the SG project team to ensure that the evaluation gathered & presented fully reflects the work undertaken and insights captured.Phase 1 – Review & Planning will take place in October and November 2024 . The purpose of this phase is to:• Work with the SG project team and EAC project leads to review the work undertaken by the EAC projects to date, gain a clearer understanding of the challenges and opportunities they face and identify appropriate themes to explore within the Learning Partnership. The suppler will also design and agree an approach to ensure that insights shared in the Learning Partnership can be shared with the SG project team, while also providing a space in which EAC project leads can share their experiences openly.• Work with the SG project team to ensure that the Learning Partnership 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 deign principles and identified user needs for parents and carers, children and providers of SACC. *• Work closely in partnership with the EAC Learning and Skills Development programme supplier to agree an approach to support alignment between the facilitated learning partnership and learning and skills development programmes in order to embed learning and ensure that learning can be shared dynamically with SG ELC and SACC divisions, and to ensure that EACs experience a joined-up approach which pays attention to their experiences and learning interests and needs .• Design and agree with the project team, a programme of facilitated Learning Partnership workshops and sessions for the EAC leads and other relevant members of the EACs.*Please note that these materials are not currently in the public domain and will be shared by the project team as part of onboarding the supplier.Phase 2 - Delivery will take place between December 2024 and August 2025. The purpose of this phase is to deliver a series of facilitated workshops and sessions to the EACs in which they can:• Build supportive peer relationships with the other EACs and collaborate as a network of projects to surface learning, create opportunities for shared sense-making and learning, using a diverse range of approaches• Share their learning to date with the other EACs and provide and receive input from the other EACs on their projects.• Explore the themes and approaches central to the programme, and consider how they might integrate and support these in their projects. This should include at a minimum; system change, working in complexity, engaging with families and people-centred and place-based approaches.• Inform and deepen the learning from the Learning and Skills development programme the EACs are participating in, providing opportunities for reflection on learning and the identification of areas where further learning would be of benefit.• Engage with, and reflect on, any emerging findings from Scottish Government evaluation of the EAC programme.• Reflect on the impact of the learning partnership throughout its delivery, in order to inform continuous evaluation.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 and insights from across the programme to evaluate the Learning Partnership programme delivered in order to:• Better understand what it takes to equip projects to develop place-based and people-centred local all age childcare design and delivery.• Identify the learning and intelligence gathered by the EACs and ensure this can shape the design and development of policy in ELC and the overall SACC programme.• Provide recommendations to guide the further development of local place-based and people-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 project team, and the EAC project leads, to do the following:Review & Planning1. Agree an overall plan and approach to the project2. Working with the SG project team and the EAC leads to understanding the EACs and the programme’s needs and expectations from the Learning Partnership and agreeing to the themes that will be explored within the workshops.3. Work with the Learning and Skills Development programme supplier to agree an approach to align the two programmes of work.4. Prepare and schedule a programme of Learning Partnership workshops and other relevant activitiesDelivery5. Facilitate a programme of Learning Partnership workshops and sessions for the EAC leads and others involved in the delivery of the EACs as required.6. Provide updates and insights gathered to the SG project team throughout the delivery period.7. Embed evaluation from the outset of the programme with an ongoing commitment to gather evidence as the programme proceeds.Synthesis of Evaluation8. Synthesise all evaluation undertaken throughout the programme.9. Undertake qualitative interviews with the EAC project leads and SG project team to inform evaluation.10. Prepare and agree 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 for the deliverables, such as the sign-off process for the final report.• The project team will arrange for the supplier to meet with the supplier who will convene and facilitate the EAC Learning and Skills Development Programme, 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 Partnership workshops and sessions for the EACs. This plan will include agreement on the number of workshops and sessions required, the themes 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 be open to adapting plans as the work progresses in order to take account of and respond to feedback from participants and the content delivered by the Learning and Skills Development programme.Delivery of Programme of Learning Partnership• The supplier will deliver a series of facilitated workshops and sessions to the EAC project leads and other relevant members of the EACs• 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 an outline 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, in response to emerging needs and where agreed with the SG project team. This should also be informed by and agreed with the Learning and Skills Development programme supplier.• We are flexible about the number of workshops held and the number of participants attending each.• The themes considered in the workshops are intended to equip the EAC projects to embed our people-centred and place-based approach in their work within communities and support 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 consideration 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 workshops provide opportunities to explore the 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 workshops include 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 contribute to the design and approve the workshop activities.Evaluation & Recommendations• The supplier is expected to gather feedback from the Learning Partnership participants throughout the programme in order to evaluate the impact of their participation on their projects. This should include qualitative evidence shared by the participants.• The supplier is expected to collaborate with the Learning and Skills Development programme team to inform the evaluation approach.• The supplier should work with the Scottish Government 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 hosted, experiential session to share learning with a range of 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 people-centred and place-based approach to designing and delivering all age childcare within communities.o The SG project 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 SACC and ELC programmes, 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 programme of workshops. So that there can be a process of building psychological safety and trust within the Learning Partnership, knowledge is retained, and quality is consistent across the programme delivered.• Travel and subsistence where required to attend workshops 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 the learning sessions are accessible, including ad hoc requests from participants (e.g. colour blindness, visual impairments, hearing impairments, mobility) and the supplier will not disclose the individual’s needs to any party outside of the project team.