National Careers Service Subcontracting Opportunity

Futures is inviting organisations to express an interest to deliver as a subcontractor as part of our National Careers Service submission. Through this EOI, we are seeking partners who complement our existing offer. Futures want to work with innovative partners who have a proven record of high performance and hold a strong presence in the communities that they serve in the East Midlands.

National Careers Service

The National Careers Service provides high quality, free and impartial information advice and guidance to help citizens make decisions on learning, training and work. The National Careers Service has the following priority groups:

• Young People - 18-24 year olds not in education, employment or training (NEETs)
• Low-skilled adults without a Level 3 qualification
• Adults who have been unemployed for more than 12 months
• Single parents with at least one dependent child living in the same household
• Adults with special educational needs and/or disabilities; and
• Adults aged 50 years and over who are unemployed or at demonstrable risk of unemployment.

Providers must be able to support Customers to achieve the following outcomes:

Customer Satisfaction - defined as the delivery of high quality, impartial careers information, advice and guidance. This will include providing the Customer with relevant information and clear steps to advance their career planning, development and achievement of their short, medium and long-term goals.

Personal Career Management - defined as the provision of careers information, advice and guidance to help Customers understand the value and importance of managing their own careers and encouraging them to continue to manage their career on their own initiative throughout their lifetime.

Job and Learning progression - defined as progress made in learning or working life in alignment with the Careers and Skills Action Plan. It may constitute starting a formal learning programme, or completing an accredited course, starting a job or securing a promotion.

Specification

We are looking for new Subcontractors that have their own in-house customer base, for example customers that may be completing a course with you or a customer base that you provide supported living for.  We are not looking for anyone where customers may have already had a National Careers Service intervention, for example Restart of JCP customer unless you can evidence that your customer base are likely to be better linked to yourselves to suit the needs of the customer. Your customer numbers need to be ideally a minimum of 30 a month.

Proposed Geography:

Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Rutland.

Other proposed requirements:

Through this EOI, Futures are seeking partners who:

• Have strong ability to recruit eligible participants including those who have an existing customer base which aligns with the above  priority groups. Futures are particularly keen to hear from Community Groups, Charities, Housing Associations, and other organisations embedded in their local community. 
• Can recruit and support a minimum of 30 customers a month.
• Ideally can start delivery would be around 4 weeks from start of principle offer of contract. Futures would welcome those who can start utilising current staff to deliver immediately.

For clarity, we are not looking for applications from:

• Providers with referral pathways predominately through JCPs or Restart as customers likely to have already had a National Careers Service intervention.
• Futures existing National Careers Service providers

Submission information

• Once completed the form should be sent electronically to Alerts@the-futures-group.com to arrive by 23:59 on the 21^st of August 2023.
• Please return your form in word document format.
• Please send any clarification questions to Alerts@the-futures-group.com. All questions will be anonymised and responses posted on this page. The final day to submit clarifications is 16^th August 2023.
• Please be advised that any EOIs that are incomplete or submitted after the deadline will not be evaluated.