Collaborate worksheets

This series of eight worksheets draws on the learning from Collaborate, HACT’s year-long project working with six partnerships pioneering different collaborative approaches to bidding for Supporting People (SP) contracts.

It demonstrates that smaller providers can rise to the challenge of competing for the declining number of SP contracts.

The project aimed to help small, community-based housing support providers to thrive within the emerging SP framework. Its objective was to develop different collaborative approaches to tendering and delivering services, including partnerships and consortia.

Download worksheet 1: A Strategy for Change: this worksheet provides a set of tools for providers to understand the current environment and develop an appropriate strategy for the future.

Download worksheet 2: Large/small partnerships: this worksheet looks at how these relationships work, their benefits and costs for small organisations, as well as other issues to be considered.

Download worksheet 3: Consortia: this worksheet looks at the strategic questions involved when an organisation decides it needs to develop a collaborative approach in order to stay in the SP market and is considering whether a consortium might be the way forward.

Download worksheet 4: Developing positive relationships: this worksheet focuses primarily on issues raised in the process of building consortia. Much of it, however, is also relevant to organisations considering sub-contracting relationships with a larger lead agency.

Download worksheet 5: Influencing the process: this worksheet explains the opportunities to influence the commissioning and procurement process.

Download worksheet 6: Legal issues: this worksheet provides a brief introduction to the most common structures for collaborative working and to some of the issues that need to be taken into account when developing the legal agreements that capture the relationships between partners.

Download worksheet 7: Writing the bid: this worksheet contains general advice on bid-writing and reviews some of the areas where local providers can offer added value and gain competitive advantage over non-local bidders.

Download worksheet 8: Implementation: this worksheet distils some of the key points that have come out of other reports on collaborative bidding, blending them with some of the insights from the Collaborate project.

Download Collaborate – an introduction: this short document provides background information about each of the six pilot partnerships involved in the Collaborate project.

Download all worksheets.

Alternatively, you can order a Collaborate resource pack by sending us an email.