Request for Proposal Medium Value Spend

Request for Proposal

For

Empowering Parents, Empowering Communities (EPEC) Host Organisation

December 2016

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Background

3. EPEC, Host Agency Objectives

4. EPEC proposal & your response

5. Further Information

6. The Competitive Tender Process

7. Tender Evaluation process

Appendix [x]

Appendix [x]

Appendix [x]

Appendix [x]

1. Introduction

About the NSPCC

The NSPCC is the UK's leading charity - specialising in child protection and the prevention of cruelty to children.

Founded in 1884, it is the only UK children's charity with statutory powers that enables it to take action to safeguard children at risk of abuse. The society operates throughout the UK and the Channel Islands.

The NSPCC is governed by a Royal Charter and bye-laws which were first granted by Queen Victoria in 1895. It is registered with the Charity Commission under registration number 216401 and with the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, registration number SC037717.

The NSPCC is also registered in Jersey (registration number NPO 0588) and Guernsey (registration number CH214).

Focussing our work effectively to make the biggest impact in ending cruelty to children.

We are committed to ending cruelty to children in the UK. There is no single, simple solution to stop child abuse. It remains widespread and mostly hidden.

We need to find the best, most effective ways of helping children so we're focussing our work on seven priority areas where we believe we can make the biggest difference. These are:

• neglected children
• sexually abused children
• physically abused children in high risk families
• children under one
• looked after children
• children with disabilities
• minority ethnic children

We are pioneering 26 new programmes of work within these priority areas, building on knowledge we have gathered from around the world. Nationally, and in communities across the UK we are introducing services to prevent abuse and neglect, protect the most vulnerable children and repair damaged childhoods.

We are introducing our new programmes in areas with large populations and high deprivation - to reach as many children as possible. We will run them for two or three years and share what we find to improve child protection everywhere. We will use our learning to change public attitudes and behaviours and influence governments to make our society safer for children.

By persuading others to adopt new and better ways to protect children, we can multiply our impact many times over and prevent the abuse of many more children.

Ultimately, and with your support, we believe most child abuse can and must be prevented.

Further information about the NSPCC can be found atNSPCC.

2. Background

A Better Start is a Big Lottery Funded project, which aims to improve the life chances of babies and very young children by delivering a significant increase in the use of preventative approaches in pregnancy and the first three years of life. Blackpool Better Start is led by the NSPCC, in partnership with the Local Authority, Clinical Commissioning Group, Blackpool Hospital Teaching Trust, Police and the Community. Programmatic activities are mainly focused in seven wards, which have high levels of socioeconomic deprivation: Bloomfield, Brunswick, Claremont, Clifton, Park, Talbot and Victoria. The Centre for Early Child Development (CECD) is a hub of expertise, which supports the Blackpool Better Start partnership through research, learning, planning and systems leadership.

Better Start is focused on improving three developmental outcomes at the population level: social and emotional development, language and communication development and diet and nutrition (health). To achieve these outcomes in Blackpool, a framework of focused action based on a public health approach was developed to guide programmatic activity. This framework emphasises both reducing risk factors for poor parenting and building capabilities within families and communities.

According to the framework, effective parenting has been identified as a major protective factor for developmental outcomes in Blackpool. Better Start is rooted in an evidence base and our shared theory of change which will direct our approach.

Blackpool Better Start would like to ensure that all parents have access to high quality universal parenting programmes. These will reduce the possible stress of being a parent and help individual’s build and develop their own parenting capabilities with professional support. As part of the Theory of Change, Being a Parent will skill up the community to have the ability to deliver locally and do more at a community level.

This opportunity is to coordinate, implement and ensure delivery of the Empowering Parents, Empowering Communities (EPEC) Being a Parent parenting programme in order to address the identified gap in need and provision of universal parenting programmes for families with young children in Blackpool.

The primary aims for the service are:

1)recruit and train peer-parent facilitators, up-skilling and mobilising the community and ensure peer-parent facilitators are supported through all areas of employment

2)supportpeer-parent facilitators to deliver Being A Parent courses to help parents learn practical communication skills for everyday life and develop their abilities to bring up confident, happy and co-operative children.

3)To work along side Better Start to support community voice volunteers.

The Centre for Early Child Development (CECD) has key responsibility to drive forward the Better Start Blackpool partnership and as such all CECD activity is underpinned by the shared Better Start philosophy.

In Better Start:

Our vision is that Blackpool will be a place in which families raise happy, healthy children who grow up to take pride in belonging to the community. Through Better Start, every new baby in Blackpool will enjoy the early care and nurture they need for healthy development and to be ready for school

Our Priorities

• Tackling poor parental health and unhealthy gestation and birth
• Enabling our youngest children to enter school ready and able to learn and reach their full potential
• Safeguarding and protecting the most vulnerable children and families
• Tackling poor mental health and well-being
• Delivering quality services through a committed, professional and motivated workforce.

Our Values

• We are accountable for delivering on the promises we make and take responsibility for our actions and the outcomes achieved.
• We will have the courage to communicate openly and honestly, challenging the status quo and using our independence and experience to lead change for children in all our activities
• We take pride in delivering quality services that are community focussed and based on listening carefully to what the families need.
• We will respect all children and seek to foster respect for them in others.
• We are trustworthy in all our dealings with children and families and will be honest and transparent about the decisions we make and the services we offer.
• We are compassionate, caring, hard working and committed to deliver the best services that we can with a positive and collaborative attitude.

Our Principles

Children, young people and their families will be at the heart of everything we do;

• There will be “no wrong door” – equitable service will be accessed no matter which agency is first contacted
• Service will be delivered in and through the universal services rather than through separate specialist services
• We will “hold the baton” – the service will work with the family rather than just refer them on.
• Relationships will be at the centre of our work – relationships before tasks
• “Services for people, not people for services” – services will be flexible enough to meet need wherever and whenever children and families need them.
• Services will be experienced as “seamless” by children and parents.
• There will be a single point of contact - children and families will not be required to struggle through the maze of services, but will have a named individual contact.
• There will be clear, simple lines of accountability.

Effective Parenting

Effective, warm, authoritative parenting gives children confidence, a sense of well- being and self-worth. It also stimulates brain development and the capacity to learn.

Utting, D. (2009)

We recognise the importance of parental influence on every child’s life chances. After a child is born, physical health is promoted through good nutrition and immunisation. Equally important is a child’s emotional and social wellbeing. The three are interlinked and interdependent. For very young children, secure relationships, (i.e. parenting) which initially are highly sensitive and responsive to the baby’s signals and cues, have a direct effect on emotional, social and physical health, both in childhood and in the longer term. Secure relationships also have been associated with increased cognitive development, language development and many other types of learning and knowledge acquisition.Parenting and the quality of the parent-child relationship has a big impact upon the outcomes of children. Those children who have loving, authoritative and responsive parents and carers display more resilient attitudes and behaviours and are at lesser risk of developing conduct problems in adolescence and early adulthood. (Seaman, P. Turner, K. Hill, M. Stafford, A. Walker, M. (2006). Parenting and Children’s Resilience in Disadvantaged Communities. London: National Children’s Bureau)

Both parents play the most important part in raising children. The Millennium Cohort Study, for example, suggests that parents who combine high levels of parental warmth with high levels of supervision are more likely to have children at age five who are confident, autonomous and empathetic. Good parenting therefore reduces the risks that children experience poor behavioural outcomes, criminality and anti-social behaviour. Early parenting experiences are especially critical in the development of the child’s emotional regulatory system and a large proportion of adult mental health problems are thought to have their origins in early childhood.

We recognise that parents are the primary care givers and educators of their children and as such the single most important influence in their lives. Every parent is entitled to support through the exciting, rewarding and at times challenging journey of parenthood.

The relationship between parents, between parents and their child, and the activities they do together affect later development, giving children the trust, attitude and skills which help them to learn and engage positively with the world. What happens in this home environment has more influence on future achievement than innate ability, material circumstances or the quality of pre-school and school provision. When parents talk, play, read, paint, investigate numbers and shapes or sing with their children it has a positive effect on children’s later development. (Melhuish, E., Sylva, K., Sammons, P. et al. (2008))

Our aim is to take a coherent approach to promoting child development through parenting so that by the age of five children are ready to take full advantage of schooling and life.

Blackpool has a holistic integrated approach to working with families and has created a strong base on which to develop future provision. This programme will support Better Start and all its partners to build on existing good practice to ensure a continuum of support from universal to targeted interventions for parents and their children. Strong and affectionate relationships with parents, through sound early attachments, recognition and praise, and parental interest and involvement in education are all linked with better outcomes for children and we need the universal parenting programme to promote these.

EPEC– Empowering Parents, Empowering Communities – is a community-based parenting programme where local parents are trained to run ‘Being A Parent’ intervention groups. Developed in Southwark over the last ten years, the programme has received a national Sure Start award for innovation and user involvement. The model assumes that parents find it less stigmatising and more supportive to attend parenting groups run by local people who are in very similar circumstances to themselves. The Better Start Partnership will hold a contract with EPEC for the training and license required for the delivery of the programme.

Parent facilitators firstly will under go a 10 week (60 hour) training course and go on to engage and encourage other local parents to attend a manualised eight-week (16 hour) parenting course – Being A Parent.

Being a Parent is a 16-hour programme (2 hours per week over 8 weeks) delivered by local parent peer facilitators in community venues and suitable for parents of children under 12. The programme is manualised and the course materials are available in English, Arabic and French.

The course is suitable for parents of children aged 2 – 11 years from all backgrounds and with a wide range of difficulties. Typically, the groups are open access and will include Range of Need Levels 1 – 3. All families can benefit from this programme, but systems are in place to enable referral on for families with additional needs.

The course aims to help parents learn practical communication skills for everyday life and develop their abilities to bring up confident, happy and co-operative children. Learning takes place through discussion groups and role play, where new skills can be practiced in a supportive environment.

Key topics covered on the course include:

-Self-esteem

-Dealing with feelings

-Understanding behavior

-Listening skills

-Setting limits

Groups are run by trained local parent facilitators, who work in pairs, and are given regular support and supervision by the host agency.

A research programme, including a RCT, carried out by Institute of Psychiatry/Kings College London between 2009 – 2011, provided evidence that EPEC is an effective parenting intervention, showing significant improvements in positive parenting and child behaviour. The research also demonstrated the Being A Parent had good engagement with “hard-to-reach” parents, an impressive retention rate of 91.5%and high levels of parental satisfaction. Moreover, the size of the improvement in child behaviour compares favourably with outcomes from trials involving professional therapists. (Day, C., Michelson, D., Thomson, S., Penny, C., & Draper, L. (2012). Evaluation of a peer led parenting intervention for disruptive behaviour problems in children: community based randomised controlled trial. BMJ 2012; 344:e1107 doi: 10.1136/bmj.e1107.)

3. EPEC, Host Agency Objectives

Important Note: This document is also your response format. You are required to follow the instructions and use the text boxes provided for your response. As a guideline submissions should be no longer than 500 words per question excluding any additional information attached in Appendix [D].

The Blackpool Centre for Early Child Development is looking for an organisation with the expertise and skills in organising, coordinating and delivering programmes that would be interested in working with the Centre to develop the roll out of Being a Parent programme in Blackpool. The organisation would need to ensure the deliverable outputs were achieved and that they were in a position to recruit, manage, support and fully supervise (including safeguarding supervision) the volunteers. The Being Parent programme would be delivered in line with the deliverable outputs ensuring high quality at all times

To achieve effective and embedded coproduction the provider will support the following key areas;

1. Recruit, develop and progresses individual parent-peer facilitators in line with peer-parent guidelines linked to achieving the aims of Better Start and ensure that all facilitators are supported through employment processes.

1. To ensure the delivery of parenting courses through the Better Start wards.

1. To put in place training and development for all parent-peer facilitators and have clear identified pathways to further education/employment.

The service must to be directed from the host agency premises within Blackpool. Delivered across multiple locations including Blackpool’s Children’s Centres and other localities across Blackpool and specifically within the Better Start Wards which are:

• Bloomfield
• Brunswick
• Claremont
• Clifton
• Park
• Talbot
• Victoria

Monitoring, Data Inputting and Reports

The host agency will be required to ensure that the information, records and documentation necessary to effectively monitor the performance of EPEC are accurately maintained at all times and that their validity is checked at regular intervals. All data must be kept in line with data protection guidelines. The Service shall grant the CECD access to the relevant information or provide requested information to enable the service to be effectively monitored, this includes follow up evaluation with participants 6 months after attending the course.

Initially monthly progress meetings will take place with the CECD Development Manager followed by quarterly and annual performance and monitoring reports demonstrating the impact and outcomes to be agreed with the CECD Evaluation Team. It is expected that there will be regular meetings with the evaluation team to ensure there is a full process evaluation. The KPI’s are listed in appendix two.

Further information / reports will be required to be submitted to the Better Start Executive Board and Operational Boards upon request. In these instances it is requested that reports are submitted within an agreed timescale.

Additional performance review may take place if deemed necessary by the CECD.

Staffing

The Provider must name/employ sufficient numbers of people of sufficient ability, skills, knowledge, and experience to provide this service. A named person is to be employed as a part time co-ordinator to deliver the service, and it will be their responsibility to liaise with the CECD on all aspects of this service. All paid members of staff must have a current DBS and the organisation must have a safeguarding policy in place, which meets the standard of the NSPCC.