Tender: Developing the Response Pathway

The CSA Centre’s Response Pathway is an interactive online resource designed for professionals working with children, to help them understand the steps they can take to protect and support young people and their families.

It sets out how to respond to concerns that a child may be being sexually abused at key points: from first concerns and early help safeguarding through to child protection and criminal justice responses. Throughout, the Response Pathway focuses on meeting the needs of children and their families.

The Response Pathway was created for all professionals working with children. It’s particularly helpful for social workers, teachers, police officers, health professionals and those in the voluntary sector who work with children and families.

Professionals can use the Response Pathway to help inform and guide the steps they take to protect and support children if they are concerned they are being, or may have been sexually abused. The Response Pathway sets out what you can and should do at different points along the response and will help professionals understand the roles of other professional colleagues.

The Response Pathway is designed to support consistent responses across teams and agencies and organisations within local areas.  To help individual agencies and organisations or Local Safeguarding Children Partnerships to implement the Response Pathway we have published a guide for local partnerships, Starting out on the Child Sexual Abuse Response Pathway, which draws on the learning of the three local areas that have piloted the Response Pathway.

The CSA Centre is hosting a series of one-hour webinars over the coming months, free of charge and available to all, to explain more about the Response Pathway and how it can be implemented locally. Details of the webinars will be listed on this page soon or email info@csacentre.org.uk let us know if you are interested and we will be in touch when they launch.

There are three key objectives of the Response Pathway redesign project:

• To improve the external design of the Response Pathway, so that more professionals are encouraged to use the resource, can easily find the guidance they are looking for, and are enabled to regularly use it in their own work.
• To improve the CMS behind the Response Pathway so the CSA Centre can easily edit and maintain its contents.
• To host the Response Pathway on infrastructure that is secure, reliable, scalable, and supports seamless integration with the CSA Centre’s main website.

The full project overview including key features is included in the tender information document.

We expect tender responses to include:

• Proposed costs, including individual day rates and breakdown of wider costs
• Details of the team who will be working on the project
• Outline of approach to the design process, and to collaboration with the CSA Centre team
• Evidence of experience and examples of previous work
• Proposed timeline for delivery
• Specified deliverables
• Reference contact

In their responses, we expect to see examples of how applicants will support close collaboration, transparency, and regular feedback throughout their delivery.

The responses should demonstrate experience with agile delivery and iterative prototyping, particularly in the context of user-centred design for complex digital services.

All responses must complete the supplier response form included in Appendix A of the tender information document

The full details of the Response Pathway redesign project can be found in the tender information document. For additional questions about the project, email the project key contacts or email info@csacentre.org.uk.