Award of EAC Support - Learning and Skills Development Programme

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 person-centered 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 recognize 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 and 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 design and delivery of the the Learning & Skills Development programme.. Suppliers will be invited separately to tender for a contract to plan and facilitate the Learning Partnership. The two contracts will be aligned.Section 2 – Background and 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 and 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 – a separate but aligned 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 – this contract.The Learning Skills and Development Programme will run in parallel with a separate but aligned contract to deliver the Learning Partnership which the EAC project leads will be involved in. It will be important that the Learning and Skills Development Programme interacts with and complements the Learning Partnership. Scottish Government will support interaction between the two projects, and more details can be found in the Interdependencies section of this document. With regard to the provision of a Learning and Skills Development Programme, we aim to do this by offering a programme which supports the EACs to :•Develop their skills and capacity in order to further embed our person-centred and place-based approach at a local level.•Explore key themes identified in the programme e.g. working in complexity and system change and the approaches needed to work 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.•This programme will include a planning phase and evaluation phase.The contract for the Learning Partnership 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 Partnership will offer the EACs structured 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.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 the key defining features of 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 project team intend that there will be three distinct phases of work delivered by the contract. These are summarised below:1.Review and Planning - Understand the experience of the EACs to date with regard to engagement and participation and any wider evidence gathering they have undertaken to understand the needs of their communities with regard to all age childcare to identify learning needs in order to plan an approach to further develop their capacity and skills to undertake this work.2.Design and deliver a programme of bespoke learning and skills development activities for the Early Adopter Community leads and others as appropriate, gathering feedback from participants throughout in order to eva

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