The Provision of Individual Service Funds in the Bradford District

City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council wishes to accredit organisations to provide Individual Service Fund (ISF) services through which money is given to a third party (fund holding provider) to hold on behalf of the person and used to pay for care and support services in line with the support plan.

We want to offer more choice in how people use their personal budget through ISFs

This is a new approach to the provision of service which the Council will be developing in phases over the coming year. We are starting with direct delivery models, on a restricted basis and then will be moving onto open processes for more complex provision where the ISF fund holder may hold and deliver the funds. For further information please see the Expression of Interest under DN422753

Under an ISF a Provider can deliver some or all of the services required to meet a person’s outcomes. Where the Provider does not deliver all the services, they can work with the person to buy in support from another organisation or support them to purchase equipment, employ Personal Assistants, or arrange other types of support. A Provider could also choose not to deliver any services but to buy in the person’s full care package from other providers with the person’s agreement.

This will be procured under a phased approach. The first phase is the accreditation of ISFs for Home Support providers. In line with the commitments made as part of the engagement for the Home Support CQC Regulated Services locality contracts, and service users affected by this, the offer will be available in the first instance only to Home Support providers who wish to both hold and deliver ISF services. The process for Phase 1 will follow the work undertaken by the Locality implementation team and identified providers will be invited to apply for accreditation, through a series of restricted processes from 30.9.2019.

Subsequent phases will extend the ISF offer through open processes in conjunction with the market for organisations who wish to act as fund holder to work with other organisations and/or deliver services. We will be holding events with interested organisations to develop this and incorporating the learning from phase 1.

The Council will be undertaking light touch procurements in relation to these processes. These will be published on Yortender within the coming year.

The services required under these procurements fall within Chapter 3, Section 7 and schedule 3 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (SI 2015/102) and are therefore not bound by all of its requirements. The Council will follow its own modified version of the Dynamic Purchasing System process prescribed under regulation 34 for setting up and running these Individual Service Funds Pseudo Dynamic Purchasing Systems.