The UK’s care system is designed to meet a diverse range of needs, which has led to the development of a multi-faceted network of services. While this comprehensive approach ensures that individuals receive tailored support, it can also make navigating the system more complex, especially for care providers looking to secure contracts with local authorities.
Understanding the different care models, regulatory requirements, and procurement processes is essential for providers who want to stand out in a competitive landscape.
In this blog, we focus specifically on Supported Living – a vital part of the care system that empowers individuals to live independently with the right level of support.
We’ll guide you through the key steps of evidencing compliance, crafting compelling tender submissions, and successfully navigating the tendering process.
What is Supported Living?
Supported Living in the UK refers to a model of care that helps individuals – often with learning disabilities, mental health needs, or physical disabilities – to live as independently as possible in their own home or shared accommodation.
While individuals live independently, they receive tailored health and social care support to assist with daily tasks such as personal care, managing finances, preparing meals, or accessing the community.
Supported Living arrangements can vary:
- Some individuals live in housing they rent or own, receiving support from external care providers.
- Others live in accommodation provided by the support organisation or housing associations, where care staff are available to assist with daily needs, but the focus remains on promoting independence.
Unlike residential care, Supported Living emphasises choice, control, and autonomy, with individuals having greater say over their daily routines, support plans, and living arrangements.
Understanding Compliance and Quality Standards in Supported Living
There are a number of different regulatory bodies who assess care providers in the UK depending on the type of care delivered and the age of those receiving care. In this blog, we’ll be specifically focusing on adult Supported Living services that are regulated by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
Under CQC, providers are assessed and rated against the CQC’s 5 standards and have to provide evidence of how they consistently deliver against each category.
The Benefits of Evidencing Compliance in Supported Living
Proactively collecting evidence can seem like a daunting task and a lot of extra work. But it actually helps save time when it comes to vital moments like putting together bids for tenders and reporting for CQC.
Below, we break down two key benefits of continually collecting feedback and keeping detailed reports.
Preparing for CQC Inspections
As of November 2023, the CQC introduced the Single Assessment Framework which changed the way that providers are assessed and moved to a more evidence-based approach.
Inspectors expect comprehensive evidence of reported incidents, follow-up actions, feedback from individuals receiving care and their families, and more.
Trying to gather all this information at the last minute when an inspection is imminent can be overwhelming and inefficient. Instead, having the right tools and systems in place makes it significantly easier to collect and organise evidence consistently as part of your daily operations.
Demonstrating Compliance to Help Win Tenders
Winning tenders from local authorities as a supported living provider is highly competitive. To stand out, providers must demonstrate compliance, quality, and value for money while ensuring they meet all the requirements of the tender.
Again, having a significant body of evidence that proves compliance and historic quality of care makes it easier to compete for tenders as you’ll have lots of proof to help justify and strengthen your submission.
But first, you need to know where to look to find suitable tender opportunities.
How to Identify Tender Opportunities as a Supported Living Provider
Local authorities and government bodies publish tenders on procurement portals such as:
- Contracts Finder (for contracts over £10,000)
- Find a Tender Service (FTS) (for higher-value contracts)
- ProContract (Due North), Delta eSourcing, or local council portals
It’s also a good idea to register with procurement portals as many local authorities use electronic tendering systems, such as Proactis, BravoSolution, or In-Tend. You can also register to receive alerts about new opportunities so that you can act fast.
How to Prepare for Tenders as a Supported Living Provider
Once you’ve identified a tender opportunity that seems like it will be a good fit for your services, you’ll need to review the eligibility criteria such as experience, financial standing, compliance standards, and quality accreditations to ensure that you meet requirements.
Build Strong Partnerships and Networks
Developing relationships with local authorities, housing associations, and community organisations can significantly strengthen your tender application.
Local authorities often value providers who demonstrate a collaborative approach to service delivery, as it shows you can effectively coordinate with key stakeholders to meet the diverse needs of service users.
To strengthen your submission you could consider:
- Engaging with commissioning bodies through industry events or local forums to understand their priorities.
- Forming partnerships with complementary service providers to offer integrated care solutions.
- Gathering letters of support or endorsements from trusted community partners to add credibility to your bid.
This approach not only enhances your understanding of local needs but also shows your commitment to being part of a broader support ecosystem, which can give your tender a competitive edge.
Proactively Collect Evidence
As we mentioned earlier in the blog, it’s valuable and a real time-saver if you already have the documentation to hand when it comes to submitting a bid.
Proactively reaching out to visitors, patients, and the families of those receiving care to provide case studies, testimonials, and positive outcomes makes it easy to prove past success and convince local authorities that they can trust you to deliver quality care.
On top of this, ensure you have the right tools in place to automate as much as the manual data collection and analysis as possible. Use digital tools like Vatix’s incident reporting and risk assessment software to track incidents, improve safety, and provide auditable records to proactively demonstrate compliance.
Get to Grips with Tender Documents
There are a number of different elements that you need to be aware of when looking over tender documents.
- Invitation to Tender (ITT): Details what the buyer (local authority) is looking for, including service specifications, contract terms, and compliance expectations.
- Pre-Qualification Questionnaire (PQQ): A preliminary screening stage assessing financial health, past experience, policies, and certifications.
- Specification and Scope of Work: Outlines the level of service required, performance indicators, and compliance expectations.
- Evaluation Criteria: Local authorities assess tenders based on a scoring system, typically including:
- Quality (60-80%) – Evidence of experience, staff training, safeguarding measures, and risk management.
- Price (20-40%) – Cost-effectiveness and value-for-money considerations.
At this stage, you should have a clear understanding of the requirements and the necessary evidence to support your case, putting you in a strong position to begin drafting your tender submission.
What Should You Include in Your Tender Submission as a Supported Living Provider?
Demonstrate Compliance & Quality Standards
Local authorities place significant emphasis on compliance with legal and regulatory frameworks when evaluating tender submissions.
As a supported living provider, it’s essential to clearly demonstrate how your service meets the requirements outlined by the CQC, or the Supported Accommodation (England) Regulations 2023 (particularly if providing housing as part of the care package), along with any relevant local authority guidelines. This includes showcasing your commitment to safeguarding, health and safety, and the delivery of person-centred care.
Provide concrete examples of how you implement and monitor quality standards within your organisation. This could include regular audits, staff training programs, incident reporting procedures, and continuous improvement initiatives.
The ability to evidence robust governance structures and a culture of accountability will reassure commissioners that your service is not only compliant but also dedicated to maintaining high standards of care.
If you also provide accommodation as part of the care package, you will need to submit additional evidence to demonstrate the safety, suitability, and quality of the housing environment. This includes property compliance documentation such as health and safety risk assessments, fire safety certificates, gas and electrical safety checks, environmental health reports, and maintenance schedules.
Evidence of how you manage tenancy agreements, handle repairs, and ensure the living environment promotes well-being and independence will also strengthen your submission.
Pricing Strategy
A well-structured, transparent pricing strategy is critical in any tender submission. Local authorities are looking for providers who can deliver high-quality supported living services that also offer value for money. Your pricing should reflect a clear understanding of the costs involved in delivering the service, including staffing, training, accommodation (if applicable), overheads, and administrative expenses.
When outlining your pricing strategy, provide a detailed breakdown of costs to demonstrate transparency. Justify your pricing by linking it to the level of service provided – explaining how your costs support the delivery of safe, effective, and person-centred care.
Highlight any efficiencies or cost-saving measures your organisation employs, such as the use of technology for incident reporting, risk assessments, or compliance monitoring. This approach not only shows financial responsibility but also reinforces your commitment to delivering value without compromising on quality.
Using a dedicated compliance system allows your staff to follow a streamlined process which improves the consistency and quality of care provided. Flag this in your tender submission to show that the time previously spent on bureaucratic or manual paperwork is now being redirected to service users.
For providers offering accommodation, it’s essential to factor in additional costs related to property management. This includes expenses for rent, utilities, building maintenance, insurance, security measures, compliance with housing standards, and emergency repairs.
Clearly outline how these costs are managed within your pricing model, ensuring transparency around housing-related charges while demonstrating cost-efficiency in delivering both care and accommodation.
Provide Policies & Procedures
Comprehensive and up-to-date policies and procedures are a cornerstone of any strong tender submission. These documents demonstrate that your organisation operates within a clear framework that prioritises safety, consistency, and best practices. When preparing your submission, include key policies such as safeguarding, health and safety, risk management, incident reporting, data protection, and equality and diversity.
It’s not just about listing these policies – be sure to explain how they are implemented in daily operations. Describe how staff are trained on these procedures, how frequently policies are reviewed, and how you ensure they are consistently followed. This level of detail shows local authorities that your organisation doesn’t just have the right paperwork in place but actively applies these practices to protect and support service users effectively.
If you’re a supported living provider who also offers accommodation, your documentation and due diligence will need to be more extensive. In addition to care-related policies, you should include housing management policies covering areas such as tenancy management, property maintenance, health and safety checks, fire safety protocols, emergency response plans, anti-social behaviour management, and tenant rights and responsibilities.
Tenders often come with a structured framework to guide you through the submission process, but it’s easy to overlook key details.
How Can Vatix Help?
Vatix’s software enables supported living providers to efficiently track, manage, and report incidents in real-time, ensuring that all compliance-related data is well-documented and easily accessible. This not only reduces administrative burden but also allows providers to present clear, verifiable evidence of regulatory compliance in their tender submissions – demonstrating a commitment to maintaining high safety and quality standards.
Our all-in-one event reporting solution enables staff to report incidents and allows families to provide feedback or raise concerns. It manages follow-up actions and compliance tracking, making it easy to evidence your processes in tenders with reports and screenshots.
Robust risk management is a key criterion in most supported living tenders. Vatix’s risk management software lets you schedule reminders so you never miss a review and monitor the outcome of risk assessments from your analytics dashboards. All this data can then be shared as part of your tender submissions to demonstrate how proactively you assess and act on risks.
Similarly, our audits and inspections software enables you to record positive outcomes and feedback to use during the tender process. Undertaking regular internal audits and inspections also ensures that you’re meeting the standards required by the CQC and you’ll be ready for when their actual inspection takes place.
Showing this level of transparency and accountability can significantly strengthen a tender application, as it shows that the provider has effective systems in place to minimise risks and respond quickly to incidents – a crucial factor for local authorities when selecting service providers.
With Vatix, you can also filter the data shown on your dashboards on a contract level, enabling you to easily extract and share relevant reports with the local authority to demonstrate contract performance.
By showcasing data-driven improvements and a commitment to learning from incidents, providers can highlight their dedication to service excellence – a key differentiator in competitive tenders.
Conclusion
Winning tenders as a supported living provider requires proving compliance, demonstrating high service quality, and offering value for money.
Incorporating Vatix’s solutions into your service model not only strengthens your operational effectiveness but also provides compelling evidence of your commitment to compliance, safety, and continuous improvement – all of which are highly valued by local authorities during the tender evaluation process.
To help ensure nothing is missed, we’ve created a comprehensive checklist that covers everything you should include for a strong, compliant submission.
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