“DECLASSIFIED on 7/1/13: Contracts Finder Publication – for information purposes only”
THE INNOVATION FUND: SUPPORT FOR SEPARATED FAMILIES
Specification
Contents
1. Background
2. The Innovation Fund: Support for Separated Families
3. The Bidding process
4. The Service Requirement
5. Programme Evaluation
6. The Commercial Timeline
7. Further Information
Annexes
1. Summary of existing and planned Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
support for separated families
2. Summary of existing Department for Education (DFE) support for relationships
3. Summary of policy and provision for separated families in Scotland
4. Summary of policy and provision for families in Wales
5. Further useful information about separated families
1.
BACKGROUND
1.1.
The Government believes that strong and stable families are essential to a strong
and stable society. When families do separate they should be offered the help and
support required to help them work together in the best interest of their children.
1.2.
Too many families default to using state services, whether that is through the courts
or the Child Support Agency, when they experience separation, which can cause
conflict and costs around £420m per annum for the CSA and £550m for the courts.
Therefore the Government wants to support more families to access the help and
guidance they need to make their own arrangements and continue to work together
in the interest of their children. Research shows that when children have a positive
relationship with both parents they are more likely to do better at school; stay out of
trouble; have higher levels of self esteem and develop healthier relationships an
adult. Negative outcomes for children do not necessarily result from separation
itself, but from the parental conflict associated with separation.
1.3.
A review by One Plus One highlighted the factors which can exacerbate or protect
people from the adverse effects of relationship breakdown. For children, these focus
on parenting quality, communication and relationships between parents and
between the parents and the child, as well as financial resources and maternal
mental health. For adults, they focus on social and economic support, the ability to
forgive and consideration of who initiated the separation.
1.4.
The Government is committed to better co-ordinating access to support services for
separated families. This means helping parents to navigate their way through issues
including legal, housing, and financial and employment concerns, whilst also
considering the financial needs of their children. The aim is to help parents
collaborate for the good of their children, primarily by making their own effective
family-based child maintenance arrangements.
1.5.
The Government published the Green Paper “Strengthening families, promoting
parental responsibility: the future of child maintenance” in January 2011 which set
out reform proposals and sought people’s views. 1A survey with CSA clients
established that around half of CSA parents with care and a majority of non-resident
parents surveyed felt that they could make a family-based arrangement if they had
the right support.
1.6.
Many parents stated that they are unable to navigate the information and support
services that are already available, even when they wish to do so. Inevitably,
statutory services tend not to be flexible enough to recognise the inter-related
issues that parents may need help in resolving. That is why Government wants to
join up the support that is available to ensure parents are able to access the right
support at the right time, to better equip them to work together to deal with the
effects of separation with a focus on their children’s best interests..
1.7.
Currently, there is no central system which supports parents to think about the
whole range of issues they generally face when separating. That is why the
Government asked a Steering Group comprised of experts from the voluntary and
community sector, as well as academia to advise on how best to coordinate existing
1
Wikely et al (2008) Relationship separation and child support study, DWP report 503, p169
support services, identify gaps in provision and to consider which interventions
might be effective in helping parents to work together.
1.8.
The Steering Group recommended that existing support services are coordinated
through delivery architecture which helps parents find the support they need, when
they need it. They proposed that Government provides funding to enable:

A distributable web application to be launched in late 2012, which will provide
diagnosis, content and signposting for separating and separated parents on the
websites they already use. The web application will also meet the Government’s
commitment to an online hub to provide information and support to separating and
divorcing couples as outlined in the Family Justice Review.

The web application will be supported by telephone and face to face support in
2013 for parents that cannot access the web or need more intensive support.

A quality mark that parents can trust will also be developed so that they know that
the support services they are accessing will uphold the principle of collaboration in
the best interest of their children.
1.9
Additionally, Government is committed to enabling the testing and evaluation of
initiatives which can help parents to collaborate. This is to be achieved through the
Innovation Fund: Support for Separated Families.
1.10
Bids are now invited for the first round of projects under this Innovation Fund:
Support for Separated Families. This specification document provides information to
support potential suppliers when developing their proposals.
1.11
It should be read in conjunction with the following documents:


The Initial Application Form (IAF) and
The Instructions to Potential Suppliers
2.
THE INNOVATION FUND: SUPPORT FOR SEPARATED FAMILIES
2.1
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is keen to learn what works best in
helping separated parents to collaborate and resolve conflict in order to best
support their children. The Innovation Fund: Support for Separated Families
provides up to £14 million of funding from DWP. This funding will support a range of
new projects for up to a two year period (with the possibility of a further extension of
up to one year) and will also enable the Dept to gather more evidence on the types
of support that are most effective.
2.2
Specific objectives for individual projects may differ, but all projects should support
the two key objectives of the Innovation Fund: Support for Separated Families,
which are to:

Increase the number of children benefiting from child maintenance arrangements by
reducing conflict and improving collaboration between separated and separating
parents. This will be achieved by developing effective interventions that help
parents to change their behaviour and work together to avoid defaulting to using the
Courts or the CSA.

2.3
Test a wide range of interventions across a range of channels in Great Britain (GB)
to understand what is effective in changing parental behaviour, encouraging
collaboration and reducing conflict amongst separating and separated parents.
DWP will develop an evidence base of the most effective interventions across the
spectrum of help and support available.
Increasing collaboration and reducing conflict
2.4
Proposals for new interventions need to be measurable. Increased collaboration
and reduced conflict could be demonstrated in a number of different ways, including
the following:

A private/family based child maintenance arrangement which can be either
formal (with a written agreement) or informal (without a written agreement). It
could take the form of: regular payments of an agreed amount; agreed ad hoc
contributions such as bill payments, holidays or school needs etc.; non-financial
contributions specifically for the support of children (e.g. clothes or contributing
to child care arrangements)

Separated parents establish a joint parenting plan, for example, to demonstrate
that they are working together around the educational and health needs of the
child.

A validated measure of relationship quality amongst separated parents (e.g. the
Parenting Alliance Measure).

A demonstrable reduction in conflict between parents.

Other relevant measures of behaviour change.
3.
THE BIDDING PROCESS
3.1
This is the first of two bidding rounds for this Innovation Fund: Support for
Separated Families. This bidding round will award contracts early in 2013. The
second bidding round will begin early in 2013, with contracts awarded later that
year. This is intended to enable those organisations that are more developed in
their thinking to come forward in the first bidding round, whilst those who need more
time to develop proposals and partnership arrangements will have time to do so
before bidding in the second round. Those who are unsuccessful in round one can
submit another proposal at round two. Second round bids may be encouraged from
parts of GB that are not represented after the first round.
3.2
Each bidding round for the Innovation Fund: Support for Separated Families will
involve a two stage competitive bidding process. The first stage is the completion of
a simple Initial Application Form (IAF). Once the IAFs have been evaluated and the
most promising proposals selected, the shortlisted potential suppliers will be invited
to the second ‘Invitation to Tender’ stage.
3.3
This specification is intended to support potential suppliers at the IAF stage.
Further information will be provided to the shortlisted potential suppliers at the
Invitation to Tender stage. At that stage, the shortlisted potential suppliers will also
be required to provide information about their cost structure and pricing. Our
intention is to fund successful projects using a mixture of participation payments (ie
a payment for each intervention delivered by the project) and service fees (ie a set
monthly payment to help with infrastructure and delivery costs). A financial viability
check will be conducted at the Invitation to Tender stage to assure ourselves that
potential suppliers have the financial capacity to deliver the services to the scale
proposed.
3.4
DWP anticipates that they will let between 12 and 20 contracts in total for this
Innovation Fund: Support for Separated Families over both bidding rounds, but this
is an estimate only and precise numbers will depend on the quality and value of
bids received.
3.5
There is up to £14 million available for the Innovation Fund: Support for Separated
Families of which a maximum of £9 million will be allocated to projects in the first
bidding round, with the remainder being reserved for round two projects. DWP will
also utilise up to a further £1 million to evaluate the success of the projects.
4.
THE SERVICE REQUIREMENT
Who is eligible to bid?
4.1
Bids are encouraged from public, private and voluntary sector organisations, either
on their own or as part of a partnership with others. We know that voluntary sector
bodies have a wide range of skills and expertise in working with separated families
and would therefore particularly encourage them to bid, either as a main bidder or
as a partner/sub-contractor.
4.2
It is essential that the organisation(s) who will be delivering the services to the
separated parents have previous appropriate experience of working with separated
and separating parents, in order to understand their emotional and practical needs,
and improve the relationship between, parents affected by separation. We are
particularly interested in interventions addressing the hard to reach or traditionally
disengaged audiences.
4.3
Bids from single organisations or from partnerships/consortia will be considered.
However, we are only able to contract with a single legal entity. Therefore,
partnerships will need to either form a new single legal entity or one of the partner
organisations will need to lead the bid with the others acting as sub-contractors.
Bidding events will be held to enable potential suppliers to meet and ask questions
prior to expressing their interest.
4.4
Bids can only be accepted for projects within Great Britain (GB), i.e. England,
Scotland and Wales. Potential Suppliers based outside of GB can bid for projects
delivered within GB, but they would need to demonstrate that they or their partners
have appropriate experience and a strong understanding of the area(s) in which
they are bidding.
Key principles
4.5
The projects should focus on encouraging separated parents to better collaborate
where appropriate, and resolve conflict in order for them to act in the best interests
of their children and reach their own effective arrangements.
4.6
Participants must be separated or separating parents with at least one child under
the age of 16 (or 19 if still in full time, non-advanced, education). Funding is
available for interventions that work with just one parent but results must
demonstrate how both parents are working together better as a result of the
intervention. We expect some interventions to work with both parents.
4.7
It is important that project proposals do not duplicate existing provision for
separating and separated parents in the same area – the provision must deliver
support which would not otherwise be available in that locality or via the same
engagement channel.
4.8
Funding will be awarded for an initial period of up to 2 years although we expect the
actual length of projects to vary, with some being funded for a shorter period. There
may be the potential for an extension of up to a further year subject to performance
and funding availability.
4.9
We are not prescribing the type of support that should be tested under the
Innovation Fund: Support for Separated Families – of importance is that proposals
address our objectives and do not duplicate existing or planned provision. There
are however some necessary requirements including those relating to:




compliance with legislation
complying with DWP codes and standards
ensuring the safety of the project participants
The security of data - contractors will be required to comply with DWP data
storage and data movement requirements (link here to Data Protection and
Information Security guidance). They will also be expected to collect
Management Information (MI) for the purposes of payment validation and
ongoing performance monitoring.
4.10
We want to test a range of different projects and new concepts, therefore we will not
award more than £1.5 million of funds to any one project in total (ie over the
maximum two year contract period). There is no minimum size of project.
4.11
We will not prescribe the engagement channels or geographical areas in which the
project is delivered – it will be for potential suppliers to define where and how the
services will be delivered along with a rationale as to why those localities have been
selected.
4.12
Where the proposal involves delivering the same type of project in multiple
geographical areas, the information should be submitted under a single IAF. If you
want to submit proposals for different types of provision, there should be a separate
IAF for each and each will be evaluated separately.
4.13
There are no limits on the number of IAFs that can be submitted but we encourage
developing one or two high quality proposals rather than submitting a larger number
of less well developed ideas.
4.14
Outcomes of all interventions should be measurable.
5.
PROGRAMME EVALUATION
5.1
It is important that lessons are learned from each contract funded through the
Innovation Fund: Support for Separated Families, with a view to considering wider
replication of the interventions that are found to be effective. We will therefore
undertake a formal evaluation of each project; the specific type of evaluation may
vary depending on the size and scale of the project. Where projects are of a
sufficient size, we will be keen to consider options for a full impact assessment
evaluation which might for example involve using a control group or random
assignment to measure the difference the intervention makes. We do, however,
expect potential suppliers, to demonstrate that they have considered how the
project could be evaluated. Evaluation will be considered in further detail at the
second stage of the bidding process but all projects must be measurable so
consideration should be given to how the project should be evaluated.
5.2
All the evaluations will be conducted either by the Department or external
evaluation contractors.
We require Innovation Fund: Support for Separated
Families contractors and any supply chain members/partners to fully co-operate
with evaluation requirements. The findings will be disseminated through published
research reports.
5.3
To support the evaluation and enable us to monitor the delivery of the projects
during live running, contractors must provide monthly Management Information.
The precise nature of this may vary on a project to project basis. More information
on evaluation and management information will be provided to shortlisted potential
suppliers at the Invitation to Tender stage.
5.4
In order to properly evaluate each individual project and to give each project the
best possible chance of success, we reserve the right to restrict the number of
projects we fund in a particular geographic locality or to a particular customer
segment.
For example, if we had two good quality tenders for face to face support targeting
the same customer groups in Manchester, then we would only fund the highest
scoring of the two. However, if there were two bids, one of which involved a digital
media service covering the whole of the North West and the other involving an
intensive face to face support service in Manchester, we may be able to fund both –
provided we were content that we could successfully evaluate each project and that
funding both of the projects would not adversely jeopardise either contractor’s ability
to recruit sufficient participants.
6.
THE COMMERCIAL TIMELINE
6.1
The high level timetable for the first Innovation Fund: Support for Separated
Families bidding round is as follows:
Deadline for IAF responses
10am 17 August 2012
Short-listed
Announced
Potential
Suppliers
w/c 24 September 2012
ItT issued to qualified Potential Suppliers
3 October 2012
Deadline for ItT responses
16 November 2012
Potential Suppliers notified of results
January 2013
Post Tender Discussions
Jan-Feb 2013
Contract Award
February 2013
Service Commencement
By end March 2013 at the
latest
7. FURTHER INFORMATION
7.1
The DWP website is a useful source of information on the Innovation Fund: Support
for Separated Families. There is more than one fund so please ensure you are
reading about the correct fund.
7.2
Please direct any queries or comments to our dedicated mailbox:
[email protected]
Annex 1: Summary of existing and planned DWP provision for separated
families
Child Maintenance Options is a telephony service run by CMEC for parents going
through separation. Our agents are available to provide free and impartial help and
support on child maintenance issues. The Child maintenance Options website also has
a range of tools to help parents make their own, collaborative, family-based
arrangements. These include a child maintenance calculator, discussion guide and
family-based arrangement form.
The statutory system, currently run by the Child Support Agency, can calculate, collect
and enforce child maintenance payments between parents.
Additionally, as part of the wider programme to support separated families, the
following is being developed [and commissioned?]:

A distributable web application which aims to reduce confusion by providing a
diagnosis of a parent’s support needs. They will then be directed to information
relevant for them (e.g. emotional needs or legal). Parents can also be signposted to
the services most appropriate for their needs. The web application will also meet
the Government’s commitment to an online hub to provide help to separating and
divorcing couples as outlined in the Family Justice Review.

A more consistent telephony service amongst key voluntary and community sector
services, with the focus on collaboration between separated parents (where
appropriate).

Local face to face support is also being considered for delivery during 2013.

A quality assurance process will be established to ensure that parents are able to
feel confident that they are dealing with trusted, credible organisations.
Annex 2: Summary of DfE funded support
DfE currently funds a number of VCS organisations to test services that help
families work together. These are being funded until March 2013.
Getting It Right For Children When Parents Part (delivered by One Plus One) – An
online programme, which aims to help separating and separated parents improve
outcomes for their children during and after separation.
Kid’s Turn (delivered by Relate, in partnership with National Family Mediation) – Focusing
on the wellbeing of the children, this course gives the whole family the opportunity to learn
new skills to be able to cope with separation or divorce.
My Mum and Dad Argue a Lot (delivered by One Plus One) – An evidence based
resource package for frontline practitioners working with parents and families to help them
manage conflict within intact relationships.
Parenting Together (delivered by the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships) – An
intensive service for parents in conflict over their children to support them to work more
collaboratively, ensuring non-resident parents and their children can maintain contact.
Stay Connected (delivered by the Fatherhood Institute) – A half-day face-to-face seminar
designed to help men and women navigate the separation journey and consider the role of
fathers. It is also being delivered via employers to help reduce stress among separated
fathers in the workforce.
Separately to this work, CAFCASS fund the Parenting Information Programme (PIP):
Parenting Information Programme (PIP) (delivered by a variety of voluntary sector
providers countrywide) – Is only available to those who have applied to court in relation to
a dispute about their children, and who have been directed to attend by a judge. However,
the Government is currently considering how a similar programme might be made
available to parents before they go to court. The programme comprises two group
sessions and is designed to support parents in making contact arrangements work,
through information on:
 The separation process
 How it can affect them and their children
 How to change things for the better
 The challenges of post-separation parenting
 How children can be best supported
 Enabling parents to take steps towards their own solutions
 Family mediation and how this process will assist them to agree / negotiate their
split.
New services should build on and not duplicate the work of the services detailed
above.
DfE also funds a number of services (that as part of wider provision) to help
separating and separated parents with a range of issues that they face:
Asian Family Counselling Service
Help mediate post separation, to ensure children have positive contact with both parents.
Coram Children's Legal Centre website
Offers free legal advice on family, child and education law including contact.
Families Need Fathers
Provide information, advice and support services for parents to help them maintain a
relationship with their child during and after family breakdown.
Family Lives
Provides support for parents and carers of children on any issue - online and through a
telephone helpline.
Gingerbread
Provide relationship support for hard to reach parents to help mitigate the negative impact
on children post separation.
Parent Connection
Online information and advice for separating and separated parents delivered by One Plus
One. The site includes articles, quizzes and videos to help parents think about the needs
of their children and parent in a more collaborative way.
Relate
Provide a real-time online live chat service to support families. Experienced counsellors
help people to explore any issues or concerns about their relationships.
Single Parent Action Network
Operates Onespace which is aimed at disadvantaged single parents managing difficult
situations that can develop into crises if preventative measures are not taken. One of the
key areas of support is an interactive Family Health Check for dealing with divorce and
separation.
Annex 3 - Summary of Scottish Government policy and support for separated
families
The Scottish Government recognises that the largest influence on children is their parents.
Parents undergoing the stress which often accompanies relationship difficulties can have
an impact on the life chances of children and young people. The Scottish Government
plans to further develop an early intervention approach to relationship support across
Scotland, putting in place support and services which will minimise conflict and negative
impact.
One element of this work is exemplified by Scottish Government's funding for two
relationship support organisations: Relationships Scotland and Scottish Marriage Care.
Relationships Scotland supports a network of affiliated local services. Support provided
includes the training of new counsellors and mediators, a programme of continuing
professional development for practitioners, the provision of policies and quality assurance
standards and work to raise public and political awareness of the importance of positive
relationships.
Relationships Scotland local affiliated services provide relationship counselling, family
mediation, child contact centres and other related forms of family support across every
region of Scotland. The Scottish Government provides funding at a national level and
individual funding to the network of 13 local services to support delivery of family
mediation.
Scottish Marriage Care provides services in a range of locations across Scotland. They
provide upstream support, often during separation. This is made up of both face-to-face or
telephone relationship counselling. They also provide the Relationships Helpline.
In additional to their help for couples, Scottish Marriage Care also carries out youth
outreach work through their REACT programme which supports the development of
healthy relationships and can support children through the break up of parental
relationships.
A broad range of activity is underway in Scotland, across the Early Years, schools, youth
work, relationship support and through more formal systems, including pre-court activity.
For further information about activity in Scotland please contact Donna Bell, Children and
Families, Scottish Government; [email protected] or 0131 244 0966.
Annex 4: Summary of Welsh Government policy and support for families
 The Welsh Government has flagship delivery programmes which provide support for
families, including Families First, Flying Start and the Integrated Family Support
Programme. Together they deliver on the strategy to tackle child poverty.
 They also link and promote access to services available more widely to disadvantaged
families and communities including those provided through the Communities First
programme, Health and Education settings, Community Safety Partnerships and Youth
Justice. The most relevant programmes are summarised below.
Families First
 Families First is an innovation programme that promotes the development by local
authority areas of effective multi-agency systems and support, with a clear emphasis on
prevention and early intervention for families, particularly those living in poverty. The
grant programme has been operating across Wales since April 2012 and includes the
development of a Team Around the Family model and Joint Assessment Family
Framework in every local authority. The programme is delivered through local Action
Plans and involves the strategic commissioning of services based on evidence of local
need.
Flying Start
 Flying Start is the Welsh Government’s flagship early years programme which was
launched in 2006/7. It aims ‘to make a decisive difference to the life chances of children
aged under 4 in the areas which it runs’.
 It provides a universal set of entitlements which all children and their families within
designated deprived areas can access without associated means testing or stigma.
 The core entitlement is prescriptive and drawn from a range of options shown to
influence positive outcomes in the medium and longer term:
 free quality, part-time childcare for 2-3 year olds;
 an enhanced health visiting service (where the Health Visitor caseload is
capped at 110 children);
 access to parenting programmes; and
 access to language and play sessions
Integrated Family Support Services
 The Welsh Government, through the Children and Families (Wales) Measure 2010, has
brought forward regulations to strengthen support to vulnerable children and families
through the introduction of Integrated Family Support Services (IFSS) in Wales.
 IFSS aims to support families to stay together by empowering them to take positive
steps to improve their lives. Initially, it’s focussed on families where parental substance
misuse coexists with concerns about the welfare of the child. The service will be
extended to other families with complex needs resulting from parental mental health
problems or mental illness, learning disabilities and domestic violence.
 IFSS is available to families across 10 out of the 22 local authority areas in Wales,
working
in
partnership
with
their
local
health
boards.
Family Information Services (FIS)
 Family Information Services (FIS) provide free, impartial help, support and advice on a
range of family issues including childcare, training, health and recreation. Each Local
Authority is required to have an FIS that meets the minimum standards set out in the
Childcare Act 2006.
Children and Families Organisation Grant (CFOG)
Third Sector organisations providing child and family services across Wales have recently
been notified of their funding for the current two-year grant round from 2012-2014. Current
recipients include Gingerbread, Relate and Families Need Fathers.
Annex 5: Further useful information about separated families
Post-separation contact and co-operative parenting are two – of several – factors linked to
children’s positive adjustment to family breakdown. Having good relationships with the
non-resident parent and a more stable environment is associated with children
experiencing fewer adjustment problems and showing improved academic achievement
(Mooney et al 2009). In turn this can lead to better outcomes in later life for children. This
is why supporting parents to work together and make family-based arrangements for
maintenance is absolutely central to our proposals.
Clearly there are not enough children benefiting from effective maintenance arrangements,
if we can help more parents to work together then one of the likely outputs is that we can
improve on the fact that 50% of children are missing out from an effective child
maintenance arrangement where regular payments or maintenance are made to the
parent with care. Around a quarter of separated families have no arrangement at all. We
know that 85,000 parents after contacting the CM Options service (which offers support
and signposting on child maintenance issues) made or changed effective family-based
arrangements, benefiting 140,000 children.
The expert Steering Group
The CSA costs £450m annually to administer the statutory child maintenance schemes
and HM court service costs around £550m in relation to family matters, we want more
parents to make their own arrangements rather than using these costly state services.
Parents need the right help and support during separation in order that they can continue
to work together in the interest of their children, therefore the Minister for Disabled People
announced a £20m investment (over the next three years) in coordinating support services
so that more parents can access support when it is appropriate.
The Minister for Disabled People, appointed an expert Steering Group, comprised of VCS
experts and academics to advice on the best way to coordinate existing services to help
parents find advice and support to help them make their own arrangements outside of the
statuary schemes, which can cause conflict. They advised that we should enable the
infrastructure that will help coordinate existing support services, so that parents find
support where they already are, help parents recognise they need support and provide
relevant content that it is trusted.
The Steering Group recommended that the web is the primary delivery channel for parents
to access support; in particular they recommended that we should develop a web
application.
Early support is crucial
Qualitative behavioural research carried out in 2009 (Promotion of Child Maintenance:
Research on Instigating Behaviour Change, 2011) found that any initial arrangement
tended to persist. So early intervention and the right support and guidance is crucial.
The Relationship Separation and Child Support Study, 2008 found that:
More than half of CSA PWCs and nearly three-quarters of CSA NRPs felt they
would be likely or very likely to make a family based arrangement were they to
receive help from a trained impartial adviser.
Around one-third of parents using the CSA when surveyed had friendly
relationships with their ex-partners, with frequent contact by the NRPs with their
children, contact and maintenance were not a source of tension and it was fairly
easy to discuss financial matters.1
66 per cent reported that some contact occurs between the NRP and children,
and over half of them (52 per cent) reported face to face contact of once a week
or more.
95 per cent of CSA PWCs were in a relationship with their ex before they broke
up.
Their principal reasons for breaking up were: that the respondent and their partner
had grown apart (34 per cent); that the ex-partner had been seeing someone else
(31 per cent); or that they argued all the time (36 per cent) (reasons not
exclusive).