WIREDGOV

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is seeking expressions of interest from suitably experienced organisations wishing to provide support for its Experts by Experience programme in England from 1 April 2014.

Experts by Experience (ExE) are people who have experience of using or caring for someone who uses health and/or social care services.  They take part in our inspections of health and social care services and our visits to monitor the use of the Mental Health Act. ExE also help us in other ways, such as taking part in consultations and staff training, and in helping us to develop our ways of working.

CQC is seeking to work with a range of ExE from the following backgrounds:

• People in the early stages of dementia
• Family carers of people with dementia
• Older people who use health and social care services
• People who have a learning disability
• People who have a physical and/or sensory impairment
• Family carers of people who have severe learning disabilities and/or
• behaviour that is considered to be challenging
• People who have experience of using mental health services
• People with experience of detention under the Mental Health Act
• People who have experience of using substance misuse services
• Children and young people who use health or care services, or are family carers

CQC would also like to hear from organisation on how it could work with offenders who are using care services. 

CQC would like to encourage bids from a range of organisations who have specialist knowledge of working with people from the above groups.

The Commission would also be happy for organisations to collaborate and submit ‘consortium’ bids, and we will help to facilitate this by sharing a public list of organisations who are interested in the work and in becoming part of a consortium.

Support organisations are responsible for managing ExE on a day-to-day basis. They will be required to:

• Source ExE that meet the above profiles
• Interview ExE to ensure they are suitable for the role
• Carry out DBS checks on all ExE and any support workers they may have
• Carry out training of ExE both with CQC and separately
• Provide supporting documentation in appropriate formats to their ExE
• Allocate appropriate ExE for inspections, Mental Health Act visits and any other work
• Pay ExE and their support workers for carrying out their work
• Provide ongoing support to ExE
• Provide regular reports to CQC
• Take part in meetings and discussions with the CQC programme management team

The pre-procurement process

Organisations with specialist knowledge of working with people from the above groups are invited to submit an expression of interest by registering on the following website https://www.delta-esourcing.com. This does not commit organisations to any further activity at this point.

If you are already registered on the delta website you will not need to register again, simply use your existing username and password.  Please note there is a password reminder link on the homepage.

Organisations must log in, go to your Response Manager and add the following Access Code:

• If you ARE interested in collaborating with other support organisations, use Access Code P737PDGG44
• If you are NOT interested in collaborating with other support organisations, use Access Code R6U44FKC99

If you experience any technical difficulty please contact the Delta eSourcing Helpdesk on call 0845 270 7050 or email helpdesk@delta-esourcing.com

When the procurement commences all communication must be directed through the Delta website, however if you have any queries prior to procurement  please direct to: procurement@cqc.org.uk

Procurement process

The procurement process will begin during the summer of 2013, and we expect to let contracts before the end of December 2013, which will enable new support organisations to recruit, train and DBS check their ExE in time for a 1 April 2014 start.

Further information regarding the formal procurement process will follow after the pre-procurement process.  

About the Care Quality Commission

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and social care in England.

We make sure health and social care services provide people with safe, effective, compassionate, high-quality care and we encourage care services to improve.

We monitor, inspect and regulate services to make sure they meet fundamental standards of quality and safety and we publish what we find to help people choose care.