I just wondered if anyone had any clarification on the point about discrimination and SEN contracts. From the website documentation;
"For Discrimination and Special Educational Needs we will seek to run a tender exercise covering both specialist telephone advice and face-to-face work."
Does this mean there will indeed be face to face discrimination and SEN work? Neither are referred to at all in any of the face to face documentation. Seems odd that a face to face contract wouldnt be referred to in the face to face docs.
Or does it mean it will be wrapped up with face to face work from another area? Which would also be odd.
I just wondered if anyone had any clarification on the point about discrimination and SEN contracts. From the website documentation;
"For Discrimination and Special Educational Needs we will seek to run a tender exercise covering both specialist telephone advice and face-to-face work."
Does this mean there will indeed be face to face discrimination and SEN work? Neither are referred to at all in any of the face to face documentation. Seems odd that a face to face contract wouldnt be referred to in the face to face docs.
Or does it mean it will be wrapped up with face to face work from another area? Which would also be odd.
Thoughts welcome.
No, there won't be face to face in Discrimination or SEN, from what I can see of the most recent documentation. I'm not sure where on the LSC site you found this but at least the later News items and Tender pages appear clear in terms of what will be tendered for (my emphasis):
All organisations wishing to deliver face-to-face Legal Aid services in Family, Immigration & Asylum and Debt & Housing and Telephone services in Family, Housing & Debt, Special Educational Needs and Discrimination from April 2013 will need to tender for, and be awarded, a new contract through this process
There will be combined telephone and face-to-face advice for discrimination and SEN.
It is in the Outline of Tender Process document:
"For Discrimination and Special Educational Needs we will seek to run a tender exercise covering both specialist telephone advice and face-to-face work."
"Family and Housing & Debt contracts will cover telephone advice only whilst in Discrimination and Education we will be contracting for both telephone and face-to-face advice delivered together."
The Outline of Tender Process document also states:
"As the anticipated volume of work in Discrimination and Special Educational Needs is relatively small, contracts will be awarded on the basis of a combined telephone and face-to-face service. Applicants will bid on the basis of hourly rates covering face to face and telephone advice for Legal Help work only. Licensed Work will continue to be payable in line with face-to-face contracts."
Post by Patrick Torsney on May 10, 2012 12:58:36 GMT
Well done Chris, no excuse not reading the actual document!
Bishblaize's original question then noted that it was odd that Discrimination and SEN was not included in the F2F contract info. S/he said:
Seems odd that a face to face contract wouldnt be referred to in the face to face docs. Or does it mean it will be wrapped up with face to face work from another area? Which would also be odd
The only conclusion I can draw from this is that the F2F contracts are standalone F2F contracts, and the specialist telephone advice and F2F contract for Discrimination and SEN is also a separate standalone contract ie you would need to bid for both telephone and F2F in these particular categories of law, as opposed to just bidding for one of the delivery types (telephone or F2F)
Well, that's my take on it. Anybody got another angle?
The document also states in relation to Discrimination and Special Education Needs there will be only 3 contracts. These will will be both for telephone and face to face advice in Special Education Needs and Discrimination. That suggests that there will only be 3 contract suppliers of across England and Wales in Discrimination and 3 in Special Education Needs. Those 3 suppliers will provide both all the telephone and all the face to face advice in these areas. This is an absolute disaster for the large numbers of current franchise holders in employment and it is why I have been banging on about it for months. It has to be judicially reviewed as the proposals are based on no specific consultation, no impact assessment, no assessment of need and no assessment of national coverage in discrimination and SEN.
" As the anticipated volume of work in Discrimination and Special Educational Needs is relatively small, contracts will be awarded on the basis of a combined telephone and face to face service. Applicants will bid on the basis on the basis of hourly rates covering face to face and telephone advice for Legal Help work only.Licensed Work will continue to be payable in line with face to face contracts.
These ITTS will also be undertaken using award criteria and price competition. The aim will be to award 3 equal sized contracts in each category, with no geographic restriction on where the applicants are based".
Equality and Diversity Forum raises concerns about the massive cut in legal aid providers for Discrimination with the proposal to have only 3 providers in the country providing all the telephone and face to face advice.
"When the Act was announced, we welcomed the fact that discrimination law was to remain within scope. However, it appears that there will be very significant cuts in face-to-face advice under the Act. The Government are about to tender for the telephone gateway services as well as the face-to-face services. It appears that not only will they be putting discrimination through the telephone gateway but also significantly cutting the number of face-to-face providers down to only three, so that the same organisations will provide face-to-face as the telephone gateway. Here is a link to the Legal Services Commission (LSC) proposals: ..........................."
