Barking and Dagenham Advocacy Service

Barking & Dagenham Council has committed to the vision of 'One borough; one community; London's growth opportunity' and advocacy services deliver this vision and in particular, our corporate priority of 'enabling social responsibility'. Advocacy supports individuals who require it to be meaningfully involved throughout the care and support process for social care and mental health, enabling individuals to direct their care and support and have choice and control.

The Council invites suitably experienced providers to submit completed bids for the provision of Integrated Statutory Advocacy Service. The service can be delivered by a single provider or partnership (working on a consortium or lead/sub-contractor basis).

The tender will be for a single Independent Advocacy Service to deliver the statutory advocacy functions of Independent Mental Capacity Advocacy (IMCA) and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS), Independent Mental Health Advocacy (IMHA) and Advocacy under the Care Act. This work will be across a range of client groups including Learning Disabilities, Mental Health, Dementia, Autism, Acquired Brain Injury, Physical Health and Substance Misuse.

The lead provider would need to have capacity to mobilise or supply-in specialist and targeted advocates as required. The winning bidder would be expected to deliver: - A quality and seamless independent statutory IMHA/IMCA/DoLS/RPR and Care Act advocacy service with a range of appropriately qualified, trained and experienced advocates, skilled across a range of specialisms. - A prompt, efficient, equitable, and seamless referral allocation and management system with determined outputs, prioritisation and case closure processes. - Effective organisational marketing and promotion, raising awareness, engaging stakeholders, targeting hard to reach groups and providing clarity around the advocacy offer. - An effective signposting service to local services through sound knowledge of service provision in the locality through productive partnership working.

The contract will commence on 1st April 2019 for a period of 2 years with the option to extend for a further 2-year period on an annual basis at the sole discretion of the Council. The London Borough of Barking & Dagenham supports the development of Consortium bids and Sub-Contracting arrangements.

Details of all sub-contractors would need to be included in the tender submission pack. It would be the responsibility of the provider to check whether TUPE implications would apply to your particular organisation.

The deadline for clarifications is 12noon on Thursday 3rd January 2019. Closing date for tender submissions is 12:00pm on Wednesday 9th January 2019.

Late applications will not be considered under any circumstances. Further information and tender documents are available on our e-tendering portal https://lbbd.bravosolution.co.uk/web/login.shtml.