DHSC publishes social care digital skills support tender worth £475k

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has published a tender to secure a partner organisation to deliver projects to support the digital skills development of the adult social care (ASC) workforce.

The tender states that the goal is “to ensure that the workforce has the confidence and skills to embrace technology and adopt digital ways of working”. The organisation that wins the tender will be “responsible for leading on discrete projects” to support the workforce in this area.

DHSC’s tender notice, which can be viewed in full here, highlights that the organisation selected will be required to “demonstrate experience in leading projects on ASC workforce digitisation and existing stakeholder networks with the ASC workforce to enable co-production with the sector where relevant”.

Five key projects are set out by the DHSC that the partner organisation will be involved in:

• Project 1 – Digital Skills Self-Assessment tool – to support the ASC workforce to self-assess their current level of digital skills against the Digital Skills Framework.
• Project 2 – What Good Looks Like Self-Assessment tool – to develop a tool that supports care providers to implement the What Good Looks Like guidance for social care.
• Project 3 – Awarding Organisation and Training Provider direct support – to support AO and TP organisations to develop the confidence and capability to deliver digital skills training and qualification in ASC.
• Project 4 – Digitising Social Care communications and engagement support – to support with the implementation of the programme’s internal communications strategy through running webinar events and blog posts to support the ASC sector in their digital journey.
• Project 5 – Support implementation of the National Digital Workforce Plan – to ensure the implementation of the plan is inclusive of the ASC workforce.

The contract was published on 21 May 2024 and is valued at £475,000. It is due to run for nine months with an estimated delivery date of 6 March 2025. The deadline to apply is 6 June at 9am.