Procurement of care and support services: best practice guidance - updated June 2021

Annex 4: Useful Tools

PCS

The Public Contracts Scotland advertising portal enables a public body to advertise all contract opportunities, irrespective of value, and thereby to meet their obligations in relation to the advertisement of public contracts. The portal also provides a 'quick quote' facility for low value contracts. Suppliers and service providers can access the portal free of charge and use it to identify contract opportunities.

Procurement Journey

The Procurement Journey is intended to support all levels of procurement activities and to help manage the expectations of stakeholders, customers and suppliers alike and facilitates best practice and consistency across the Scottish public sector.

National Occupational Standards

National Occupational Standards have been developed to provide consistent and clear benchmarks for effective performance. Further information on the units and elements related to the National Occupational Standards and to the relevant skill sets is available on the Scottish Social Services Council's website.

National Health and Wellbeing Outcomes

The National Health and Wellbeing Outcomes are high-level statements of what health and social care partners are attempting to achieve through integration and ultimately through the pursuit of quality improvement across health and social care.

Talking Points: A Personal Outcomes Approach

This approach has involved the development of a range of tools, guidance and resources to:

• support a focus on outcomes at assessment, care planning and review place the person at the centre of a more personalised approach
• enable information on people who use services and carer outcomes to be systematically gathered during assessment and review processes
• support organisations to use this information to improve outcomes at individual service and organisational levels

Performance Improvement

Guidance on the creation of a performance information and assessment framework.

Procurement and Commercial Improvement Programme (PCIP)

The Procurement and Commercial Improvement Programme enables a public body to assess its procurement capability against common criteria and standards, to identify where best practice already exists and where improvements can be made. It helps a public body to identify improvements to its structure, capability, processes and ultimately performance which are appropriate to the scale and complexity of its business.

Social Work Inspection Agency: Guide to Supported Self-evaluation

The Guide to Supported Self-Evaluation enables social work services to carry out self-evaluation with the aim of securing continuous improvement in service performance and better outcomes for people who use services. The Guide describes the expectations and standards in relation to commissioning arrangements and provides illustrations of 'very good' and 'weak' commissioning and procurement practice.