Most care providers know their CQC rating inside out. Far fewer pay the same attention to a second score that can matter just as much to their business, and in some ways more, because it directly controls whether a local authority keeps placing people with you. It’s your PAMMS rating.…

If you’re caring for a loved one with serious health needs, and their care costs are mounting, you may have heard that the NHS can fund the full cost of that care through NHS Continuing Healthcare. Naturally, the first question is: what conditions qualify for continuing healthcare? It’s the right…

Every tender comes with a window in which you can ask the buyer questions. Most providers either ignore it entirely or use it only to sort out a technical hiccup with the portal. That’s a wasted advantage. The clarification process is one of the few opportunities in a tightly controlled…

Two providers bid for the same domiciliary care contract. Both write excellent responses. Both are experienced, compliant, and capable. One wins profitably and delivers well. The other wins, then spends three years quietly losing money. The difference often isn’t the quality of the bid. It’s that one of them understood…

Few areas of public commissioning are under more strain than temporary and emergency accommodation. Homelessness has risen sharply, local authority budgets are stretched to breaking, and councils are under acute pressure to secure suitable accommodation quickly, at a price they can defend. For providers, that pressure is also an opportunity.…

If you’re bidding to support people with a learning disability or autistic people, and you’re still writing about your “facilities”, your “units”, or your “placements”, you’re speaking a language commissioners have spent a decade trying to move away from. The commissioning of learning disability and autism services has been transformed,…