Living Waters Services Ltd - Staffordshire County Council Children's Community Care Framework Success

Case Study

Living Waters Services Ltd – Staffordshire County Council Children’s Community Care Framework Success

Tender Overview

In October 2025, we supported Living Waters Services Ltd in securing acceptance onto Staffordshire County Council’s Children’s Community Care Framework (IA3441) across four complex lots and three geographical areas. This complete Light Touch Framework success under the Procurement Act 2023 established them as approved providers for community support, intensive medical care, transition to adulthood services, and independence skills development across South, East, and West Staffordshire.

The complexity of securing multi-lot, multi-geographical framework success across such diverse children’s care service areas shows why forward-thinking providers increasingly rely on AssuredBid’s sophisticated bid development expertise to navigate the difficult requirements and tough evaluation standards that define modern Light Touch Framework competitions under the Procurement Act 2023.

Living Waters Services wanted to establish complete coverage across Staffordshire’s children’s care market, accessing call-off opportunities through the council’s competitive framework system. While Living Waters had solid operational care experience, this represented their crucial entry into Staffordshire’s demanding children’s services commissioning landscape, requiring demonstration of capability across an extremely broad range of specialised care scenarios while competing against established regional providers with extensive local authority experience.

Main Challenges

Despite having operational care experience and genuine commitment to child-centred practice, the multi-lot Light Touch Framework presented overwhelming complexity that threatened their application success:

Complete overwhelm with multi-service case study demands and evaluation terror: Living Waters Services was absolutely paralysed by the requirement to demonstrate competency across four completely different service areas through complex case study scenarios – from standard community support to intensive medical care coordination (requiring £2 million medical malpractice insurance), transition planning for young adults with learning disabilities, and autism-specific independence programmes. They were terrified of creating responses that would appear generic across multiple lots, failing to demonstrate the specialised knowledge required for each distinct service area while maintaining consistent quality across all submissions.

Statement-based response paralysis and evidence depth inadequacy: Living Waters’ team was completely overwhelmed by the challenge of moving beyond statement-based responses to evidence-rich submissions. Their natural tendency to describe what they would do rather than how they would do it – combined with constant references to staff qualifications rather than child outcomes – created massive anxiety about whether their responses would demonstrate genuine delivery capability or merely theoretical understanding that evaluators would immediately reject.

Person-centred care explanation crisis and co-production demonstration failure: Despite genuinely believing in co-production principles and child-centred practice, Living Waters was in complete panic about how to explain their trauma-informed, therapeutic approaches in ways that demonstrated genuine child voice and family partnership rather than service-delivery metrics. The requirement to show how children’s preferences, aspirations, and communication styles would shape care models – rather than focusing on organisational capabilities – left them feeling completely unprepared for the sophisticated evaluation standards expected under the Procurement Act 2023.

Operational planning detail terror and ambitious commitment feasibility anxiety: Living Waters had proposed an ambitious 30-minute emergency response time commitment across three geographical areas without fully understanding how to explain the operational infrastructure required to maintain this standard during peak demand, severe weather, or staff shortages. They were terrified that evaluators would identify this as unrealistic rather than ambitious, destroying their believability across all submissions.

Procurement Act 2023 compliance confusion and Light Touch Framework system panic: Understanding the new assessment requirements under section 50 of the Procurement Act 2023, the mandatory 8-working-day standstill period, and how Light Touch Frameworks operate differently from traditional procurement – where framework acceptance was only the beginning, with future call-offs requiring separate competed evaluations – created enormous confusion for Living Waters’ team, who were used to traditional tender processes with clearer award mechanisms.

Multi-geographical pricing strategy paralysis and Most Advantageous Tender optimisation terror: The 40% Quality / 60% Price weighting across three geographical areas created complete panic about pricing strategy. Living Waters was terrified of pricing too high and losing on price despite quality performance, or pricing too low and winning framework places they couldn’t sustain financially while maintaining the ambitious service standards they had committed to delivering.

Our Intervention

When Living Waters Services contacted us in complete panic about the impossible complexity of demonstrating expertise across four different children’s care service areas through sophisticated case study responses while avoiding promotional language and maintaining person-centred focus across three geographical areas under entirely new Procurement Act 2023 requirements, our expert children’s services bid writing team immediately stepped in to transform their hopeless situation into complete framework success.

Person-centred narrative transformation and promotional tone elimination: Our bid writing specialists brought specific expertise in children’s services evaluation standards, helping Living Waters transform their service-delivery-focused responses into genuinely child-centred narratives. Our experts worked intensively to eliminate constant staff qualification references that detracted from answering questions, removed promotional language that read as “sales-oriented,” and instead developed evidence demonstrating how children’s voices, preferences, and aspirations would actively shape care models through meaningful co-production rather than consultation.

Operational planning detail rescue and ambitious commitment credibility building: Understanding that Living Waters’ 30-minute response commitment was ambitious but achievable, our experts developed detailed operational infrastructure descriptions covering staffing rotas, geographical coverage protocols, contingency planning for peak demand and severe weather, succession planning frameworks, and cross-training matrices that demonstrated exactly how this standard would be maintained under realistic operating conditions. This transformed evaluator perception from potential concern to credible operational capability.

Quality and safeguarding depth enhancement and CST collaboration explanation: Our bid writing team recognised that Living Waters needed to expand their quality assurance processes and Children’s Safeguarding Team collaboration from conceptual statements to detailed delivery frameworks. Our experts worked intensively to develop complete sections including specific escalation procedures, independent advocacy roles, SMART objectives integration with subjective wellbeing measures, long-term follow-up protocols, monthly satisfaction survey methodologies, and genuine C/YP involvement in service design and governance.

Case study evidence authenticity and outcome statistics credibility balancing: Our specialists understood the delicate balance required for case study responses – demonstrating genuine capability through outcome statistics while avoiding appearing overly optimistic. Our experts helped Living Waters balance their evidence presentation, ensuring statistics were supported by delivery detail, therapeutic approaches were grounded in realistic scenarios, and long-term planning demonstrated sustainability rather than aspiration. This resulted in Lot 3 and Lot 6 case studies achieving 4/5 “fully satisfactory” ratings.

Procurement Act 2023 compliance and Light Touch Framework positioning: Our bid writing team brought specific knowledge of the new Procurement Act 2023 requirements and Light Touch Framework operations, helping Living Waters understand the ongoing nature of framework membership and positioning them not just for initial acceptance but for long-term call-off competition success. We ensured their responses demonstrated understanding of competed services award criteria while maintaining flexibility for future specific service requirements.

Multi-geographical pricing strategy optimisation and Most Advantageous Tender positioning: Understanding the critical 60% price weighting, our experts worked with Living Waters to develop competitive pricing across South, East, and West Staffordshire that balanced their ambitious service commitments with financial sustainability. This strategic pricing approach resulted in exceptional price scores – particularly in Lot 2 where they achieved full 60% price scores across all three geographical areas, delivering combined 82.40% grand totals that positioned them as highly competitive framework providers.

How We Worked

Our children’s services bid writing team used a complete, evidence-based approach that maximised Living Waters’ capabilities while addressing all framework requirements and evaluation concerns that could have destroyed their framework acceptance:

Multi-service case study expertise application and scenario-specific tailoring: Our bid writing specialists brought deep knowledge across all four service areas – community support, intensive medical care coordination, transition to adulthood, and autism-specific independence development – ensuring responses demonstrated genuine understanding of complex clinical, therapeutic, and developmental requirements rather than generic care language that would fail essential criteria. Each case study was developed with scenario-specific detail that evaluators would recognise as authentic rather than template-based.

Statement-to-delivery content transformation and evidence depth enhancement: Our experts systematically reviewed every Living Waters response, identifying statement-based language and transforming it into delivery-focused content with specific processes, timelines, frameworks, and evidence. Where Living Waters had written “we would ensure quality,” our specialists developed detailed quality assurance frameworks with monitoring frequencies, issue resolution protocols, CST collaboration methodologies, and governance structures. This transformation addressed the fundamental evaluation requirement for depth and detail.

Person-centred narrative rescue and co-production evidence development: Our bid writing team recognised that Living Waters genuinely practised co-production but struggled to explain this effectively. Our experts worked intensively to eliminate service-delivery metrics focus and staff qualification references, instead developing content demonstrating how children’s communication styles, preferences, and aspirations would shape support packages, how families would co-design care models, and how therapeutic engagement methods would respect how children experience the world. This ensured responses demonstrated meaningful co-production and child voice.

Operational planning credibility building and ambitious commitment feasibility demonstration: Our specialists understood that ambitious commitments like 30-minute response times required detailed operational infrastructure to demonstrate credibility. Our experts developed complete staffing models, geographical coverage protocols, contingency planning frameworks, succession planning detail, and cross-training matrices that demonstrated exactly how these standards would be maintained during peak demand, severe weather, or staff shortages. This transformed evaluator perception into confidence in operational capability.

Promotional tone elimination and grounded service plan development: Our bid writing team systematically identified and eliminated language that could read as “promotional document” or “sales-oriented pitch.” Our experts replaced outcome statistics presented in isolation with statistics supported by delivery frameworks, ensuring responses demonstrated grounded operational planning rather than aspirational goals. This addressed the critical evaluation requirement for child-centred, grounded service planning.

Cultural competency and safeguarding framework development: Understanding evaluator requirements for cultural competency detail and external advocacy clarity, our specialists developed complete frameworks addressing these specific areas. Our experts explained detailed cultural competency measures, independent advocacy protocols, qualitative feedback incorporation methodologies, and governance structures ensuring C/YP involvement in service design – directly meeting evaluation panel expectations.

Procurement Act 2023 compliance and framework management preparation: Our bid writing team ensured all responses demonstrated understanding of Light Touch Framework operations under the Procurement Act 2023, including competed services award criteria awareness, ongoing call-off competition requirements, and long-term framework partnership approaches. This positioned Living Waters not just for initial acceptance but for sustained competitive advantage across future specific service opportunities.

This multi-dimensional framework strategy reflects the sophisticated approaches outlined in our comprehensive resources on navigating social care tender complexity, where success across diverse service areas requires fundamentally different strategic thinking than single-service tender approaches or traditional procurement methodologies.

Results

On 20th October 2025, Living Waters Services Ltd received official confirmation from Staffordshire County Council that they had successfully met essential criteria across four lots of the Children’s Community Care Framework, with framework membership becoming active following the 8-working-day standstill period expiring on 31st October 2025.

Their complete success across Lot 1 (Community Support), Lot 2 (Intensive Support with Medical Requirements), Lot 3 (Transition to Adulthood), and Lot 6 (Independence Skills Development) – each spanning South, East, and West Staffordshire – established them as one of the most geographically capable children’s services providers on Staffordshire’s Light Touch Framework system.

If your organisation is facing similar challenges, book a consultation with our expert bid writing team to discover how we can transform your tender approach and secure the framework positions your organisation deserves.

Category: Healthcare Tender
Client: Private
Date: October 2025
Website:

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