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LIVE AT HOME FRAMEWORK 2025 TENDER
The tender for the Live at Home (LHRL) framework 2025 has now closed. We expect to be able to provide feedback to bidders on stage 1 of the evaluation process during July. Commencement of the new framework is planned to take place on 12th October 2025, however please note that this is a provisional date.
The current Live at Home framework expires on 12th August 2025, however the recommendation is to extend the contract for up to six months to allow us to work through the impact of the higher than anticipated changes to the National Living Wage and employer National Insurance contribution. An extension also allows us to procure under the new Procurement Act 2023 legislation. This means the latest date that the new framework would commence is February 2026.
All the latest information on our commissioning intentions can be found below,
Future of Live at Home Briefing - December 2024
Future of Live at Home Market Engagement Briefing - December 2024
Future of Live at Home Market Engagement Briefing - Questions and Answers - December 2024
Like most local authorities, the Council faces significant pressures around the funding of social care. This is linked to increasing costs, rising demographic pressures and the increasing complexity of need that is supported. We know that the local care market faces challenges around recruitment and retention, however employment of overseas workers has helped to improve recruitment and capacity. Supply is generally good across the county, however there are still pockets of lower supply linked to rural areas, where there is still a reliance on the spot market.
Whilst there continues to be progress with the closer integration of Health and Social Care, there remains much to be done to improve joining up the approach across the system, particularly to avoid hospital admissions and to support discharge processes.
The Council has a strategy that focuses on keeping adults independent and living at home for as long as possible with their family and friends. Unfortunately there are times where support is required for a number of reasons and we are required to ensure that services are available for these adults.
The Council has a number of contracts/frameworks in place to ensure that there are the appropriate services available for the residents of Essex. These include the Live at Home Framework which is used to commission domiciliary care and support for adults that want to stay independent and living at home. In Essex we refer to this as Live at Home services (LAH).
We will seek to more closely integrate the domiciliary care and other services that support people to live independently and create the strategic approach to the delivery and shaping of these services.
We will review how domiciliary care works with services that support discharge such as Reablement, Short Term Care and Discharge to Assess. We will look to ensure that all services that support an Adult to live at home are working effectively.
We recognise the skills, knowledge and experience that our providers offer. Although we have improved how we engage with our providers, this is an area where we need to further improve. This includes working with framework providers to co-produce solutions to the challenges we face.
We will engage with providers at the right level, including engagement with Elected Members and Senior Officers. Engagement may increasingly be locality-based, possibly on CCG footprints.
With Health Partners and Providers, we will seek to develop a mixed but cohesive workforce which might include Health Care Assistants and Medication Specialists as well as Home Carers.
We want to free up people to do the tasks that people are better at and use technology for other tasks where possible. As well as the 'Technology Enabled Care' project, we want to consider the following:
We will review the activities we have already undertaken (see above) and engage further with providers to ensure to plan our next steps. This is likely to include a training offer as well as promoting the care worker profession more widely.
Following engagement with the market through the Essex Care Association and at a series of market wide events, as well as with our Health partners, we have identified a number of potential delivery models that support our direction of travel.
In the short term we plan to trial the following approaches in specific localities:
Integrated commissioning with CCGs for Continuing Health Care and / or neighbouring local authorities who have similar sourcing challenges