Council invites bids for Care at Home Services
Plans by The Highland Council to modernise and significantly extend home care services to cope with more referrals and provide 24/7 cover take a step forward this week.
The Council has already embarked on a wide-ranging programme to modernise its own in-house home care service to ensure wider and better access to services and to support more people in their own homes for longer. The Council will continue to be a major provider of home care services in Highland.
In addition to this, a block purchase contract is also being let and bids are now being invited from interested providers. The tender opportunity is being advertised via www.publiccontractsscotland.gov.uk. Those organisations expressing an interest in the tender will be invited to attend a Bidders’ Conference being held on Wednesday 3 December.
The Council already directly provides or secures 600,000 hours of home care per year. The majority of this provision is currently delivered by the Council itself. The in house service is set to expand as part of the modernisation of the service.
The plan is to also increase the availability of home care services through the block purchase contract of an additional 117,000 hours to accommodate new referrals from four identified areas of need. This increase in volume represents an increase of 20% compared to current provision.
The identified areas of need are:- North (a 45-minute radius around Wick); Central West (the west of Inverness and an approximate radius of 45 minutes to the north and west of Inverness; Central East (the east of Inverness and an approximate radius of 45 minutes to the south and east of Inverness); and South (Fort William and an approximate 45 minutes radius around Fort William).
The Council expects to select a successful bidder(s) in May/June of next year.
Councillor Margaret Davidson, Chairman of the Council’s Housing and Social Work Committee, said “A key priority of this Administration is delivering and securing more home care services to keep people in their homes for as long as possible and to keep more people living independently for as long as possible. The independent sector is a vital partner in delivering this agenda and, through the tender, we aim to attract providers with a proven track record to deliver high quality services in Highland which will meet the needs of service users.”
The Programme of The Highland Council 2009-2011 confirms that the Council will increase the number of older people (and others in care) who can be supported in their own homes by providing an additional £1 million in each year from 2008-9 to 2010-11 and by investing £4.7m annually in aids, adaptations and telecare.