West Sussex Mind would like to engage a consultant to evaluate our Families in Mind Service and make recommendations on how the service could be developed to better meet the needs of families going forward.
Background to Families in Mind Service
Families in Mind started as a pilot project between 2015-2018 which was funded by a mixture of grants and statutory funding. In 2019 we were successful in a bid to the National Lottery Community Fund, through their Reaching Communities programme and are now in the last year of the three year funded programme ending on 31st March 2022.
The service supports parents of children under 5 years old to develop understanding and resilience around their mental health and works in Adur, Worthing, Littlehampton and Bognor.
The objectives and outcomes of the lottery project are:
Objectives:
We need to reach out to people as early as possible to ensure that they can address their issues before they get more complex. We will do this by:
- Promoting and raising awareness around mental health and well-being to, and build emotional resilience, in parents
- Reaching out to and make contact with parents who are experiencing mental health difficulties and their partners in a variety of informal ways
- Providing advice, information and sign-posting to parents and their partners around their mental health
- Providing time limited and recovery focused individual mental health support to parents
- Providing structured group learning and development sessions to parents around mental health and well-being
- Facilitate and develop the giving and receiving of individual and group peer support
Outcomes:
Specific outcomes that will be measured will be for parents to:
- Be less isolated and have more developed support networks
- Increase their awareness and understanding of their own mental health and well-being
- Increase their skills to manage their own mental health and well-being
Although the focus of outcome measurement will be around parents, it is an explicit intention that the service will contribute to improved outcomes for children.
What we are looking for
We are looking for a consultant to look at how effectively the current model is meeting the needs of our service users and make recommendations on how the service could be developed or reshaped. Ideally we would want this work to start by the end of August 2021 and be completed by Mid October 2021.
In particular we would like it to include:
- How effectively has Families in Mind achieved the outcomes and objectives set out in the Lottery bid (as described above)
- What are the current needs of our audience, are there any specific needs following the pandemic that need to be addressed?
- Recommendations on what is needed/what could we offer, what should stay the same, develop, be added, stop?
This consultation would need to include input from:
- Prospective service users / parents of young children
- Current Service user views
- Current Staff views
- Stakeholder/partner views
When awarding this contract we will look to agree the engagement numbers for each of these audiences.
Our experience has taught us that the approach to engage and seek the views of service users and prospective service users is likely to work best with phone calls or face to face discussions (due to the fact they are parents with young families) following on from timetabled group activities. Surveys are more likely to work with stakeholders/staff.
As part of this work we would like the consultant to chair a task and finish group which will meet 3 times over the course of this evaluation between end of August and Mid October which will include contribution by an expert by experience who will we recruit from our service users to be involved in this work.
The key output of this work will be a written report summarising:
- the approach to the evaluation and who was involved,
- how Families in Mind has achieved its outcomes and objectives since the start of the Lottery funded programme,
- how the needs of the community have changed in this period and;
- how the service can be developed to reflect these changes
We anticipate that the work will take between 8-10 days to complete.
Consultant expected to:
West Sussex Mind will:
Chair task and finish groups
Create consultation tools and arrange phone calls or in person consultation sessions
Write up out-puts from task and finish groups, consultation sessions
Create a report summarising the evaluation project and recommendations for the future of the service
Provide link person to liaise with around this piece of work
Provide data, reports and contact information needed for this work
Engage the expert by experience and set up the task and finish group meetings and provide zoom links
Promote the opportunities to be involved in the consultation to service users
Our requirements
We are interested in receiving CVs from those interested in this piece of consultancy work.
We will review received CVs as they are received and will make contact with those shortlisted to discuss the work ahead of requesting a costed proposal.
We are looking for this work to take place between late August – mid October 2021, so please indicate your availability for this period when you submit your CV.
CVs should be submitted to: kate.scales@westsussexmind.org
