Purpose

Family Hubs and Start for Life funding from
DfE into Oldham is approx. £1.38m for 2025/26. This is the
fourth year of funding as a national initiative which seeks to
enhance and connect a range of services that support families at
universal and targeted level in deprived local authorities. There
is an expectation that the investment will be evaluated. It has
been agreed that through a competitive procurement process, an
evaluation partner would be commissioned to undertake this work.
The allocated Family Hubs budget for evaluation is
£67k.

Content

RESOLVED - That: The most economically
advantageous bidder would be awarded the contract to deliver the
evaluation of the family hubs investment.

Reasons for the decision

Option 1 - To complete a competitive
procurement exercise and award a contract to the most economically
advantageous bidder.

Option 2 - To not proceed with any evaluation of the family hubs
investment and rely solely on output data through existing contract
monitoring arrangements. This would not be satisfactory to meet the
needs of the DfE requirements, nor would it help with informing
future commissioning intentions of understanding which parts of the
programmes are most effective or why.

Alternative options considered

Option 2 - To not proceed with any evaluation
of the family hubs investment and rely solely on output data
through existing contract monitoring arrangements. This would not
be satisfactory to meet the needs of the DfE requirements, nor
would it help with informing future commissioning intentions of
understanding which parts of the programmes are most effective or
why.