Contracting and Funding

Apply knowledge and skills of funding and organisational processes to the construction of a funding bid or strategy relating to a new nursery set up in Tower Hamlets.

Learning outcomes/what to cover

•    Contracting and funding

•    Service level agreements

•    Consolation and partnership working

•    Commissioning and provision of services

•    Framing and construction of bids

•    Working with different funding streams in the third sector

•    Establishing a need for services

•    Structuring a delivery method

•    Identifying resources

•    Quality and policy

•    Governance and structure

A nursery is a place to nurture pre-school children of working or studying parents. The main objective is to look after children when their parents are away. It must not be taken as a business opportunity as caring about children below eight years is a daunting task which demands registration from local authority. Previously this service was more or less non-profit centric and runs on donations given by community members. But in recent period, this has been transformed into a successful business platform. The difference between this business and other business is here money always ranks second and security ranks first. The more money, demands more security. Setting up nursery requires funding in order to meet diverse need of the children. Since it is not going to provide any sort of product or service for client in a business environment, the funding remains an issue for nursery set ups. Childcare services are broadly classified into two categories such as not for profit and public services(Roda et al, 2011). In general there are three types of child care services to which the parents or community looks after. They are family care, home care or day care centers. Nursery falls into day care services where programs are developed for development of children. As nothing comes in free, whether it is a profitable venture or non-profitable venture, money is required for establishment and running. The main purpose of this piece of article is to demonstrate different strategies to be followed by childcare service like nursery set up in order to bring funds and grants for successful set up and running. The essay will demonstrate how to bid for a successful money flow and different levels of agreement required for setting up nursery. The current piece of article addresses different needs and strategies of setting up nursery in tower hamlets.

Contracting and funding can be a good option for XYZ nursery to be set up at tower helmets. Contracts is a term of agreement in between organization and a third party purchased either for good and services. Contract must not be considered in normal business terms as give product and take money , rather it specifies what requirements is there, how the current nursery is going to fulfill that requirement, how it will address the need and for what service they will be paid for or funded. Although, from definition it looks an easy pass, contract funding has four processes through which every organization or an entrepreneur has to get through.

Commissioning – The first step is to assess the need of local people as far nursery is concerned. After an initial assessment is done, the service is designed and secured.

Service Level Agreement

Procurement – It encompass specific activities which are required to ensure smooth buying process both for client and service provider. The components consist of initial advertisement to total sealing of project(Feierabend and Staffelbach, 2015).

After procurement process is done, tender application is the next crucial step. In this step nursery has to outline what is the need of the society and what is the plan of nursery and how it will be delivered. For example- if local people demands different time for leaving their children at setting, the nursery must address how shifts will be managed, human resources to be involved and how it will be done. The services to be provided will be determined based upon what service requirement has been specified from local authority. The nursery must look into the matter how the claimed service will be met and must be ready to make them understand if required. The service specifications and justifications must be strong enough to ensure the deal is set. But this process might not be good for Kidco Nursery, as it is quite small in terms of capacity and area coverage. Although, it caters to the need of local people, the population of that area also matters.

Service level agreement is defined as the degree of service that will be facilitated by the nursery to be established in tower hamlet. It must be explained in simpler language, and if necessary must include technical terms with well definition to exhibit the services to be facilitated. The service level agreement must speak about perceived work of nursery, how the performance is to be expected, its operational mechanism, what are the priorities, who all will be involved, and what guarantee or warranty will be given to local authority of tower hamlet. If possible, the nursery will address the target set to reach within a specified deadline. For example- to cover minimum 300 families in a period of six months shows our level of work and growth pattern. The different components to be included in service level agreement for setting up new nursery are as follows –

Controlling children center and how many days per week it will operate, timing of each shifts, employment status, and number of employees to be hired, their roles and responsibilities, and financial control, etc. The service level agreement must address the potential risks and issues such as if the nursery has to be shut down temporarily for any infrastructural work then what will be the status, how the community users will be categorized and how priorities will be decided among them, security, health and safety of children and charges to be paid by the users, etc. Thus, service level agreement strengthens the bidding of nursery for funding and grants(Saraceno, 2011).

Kidco nursery can incorporate this strategy to attract funding agencies, once the service level agreement is done; it is feasible to get funds from local authorities and government employees.

Being a new nursery, the claims must not outnumber our capacity and strength. Therefore, to adhere to our services claimed the nursery management will consult the other established nurseries in nearby district and will be working in partnership with two other big nurseries situated in other cities. For example- training of care takers is a must for setting up new nursery. The experienced ones can train the novices in a much better way than any professional service provider.  Since, the management is yet to start with the nursery unit, the real time issues can be addressed only after entering into real work. To address different types of issues to be raised in future, the nursery of tower hamlet will be consulting our partners as well as local authorities for sorting out the issue. Through consultation and partnership, the management team ensures to its investors and funding agencies that it is not feasible to meet our target by working alone. To prevent any unfortunate event or issues, the set up will enter into partnership and go for regular consultation(Pecora et al, 2012).

Consultation and Partnership Working

This strategy must be followed as this will build trust loyalty among its users. Working with an established name gives them a better opportunity to learn about different strategies through which they can be funded.

Commissioning and procurement of services or provision of services not necessarily suits all non-profit organizations. But in the present context, the management of new nursery to be set up declares full understanding of the concepts of commissioning and provision of services. Prior to opening of nursery, the group has carried out substantial amount of research to find out the needs of local family or parents(Munn-Giddings and Winter, 2013). As per our survey data, the current level of working parents in this area stands at 65% which is very high. Out of 65%, 48% are forced to leave their children at some distanced relative home as they have no one to look after them. Thus, a nursery is demanded by those parents to look after their children. To meet the assessed needs, the nursery program was developed which not only involves taking care but simultaneously looking after proper development of child. Post funding a qualitative survey will be carried out to find out the qualitative need of children and design service as per requirement. In recent years, the number of non-public bodies facilitating public services has been increased with funding and grants. The provision of services shows the services to be provided in order to meet the need and how they will be compensated. Service provision of new nursery ensures qualified and trained staffs available 24*7 at the setting to deliver the services as mentioned in our service level agreement. The provision of services ensures long term relationship with our users and higher degree of interaction.

As we are providing public service, for funding and investment the nursery has to bid for funds and tender with other competitor. Therefore, it is absolutely essential to bid in best way which address the need, shows the real problems to authorities and how our service is going to meet those needs. For successful bidding the following framework is to be followed-

The age group of children who will be attending the nursery and what provisions of services has been designed for each group. The safety and health services to be provided for each age group. The details of our services to be facilitated by leaflet as well as online through our webpage.

The timing or operating time must be mentioned for each day of week including holidays. This will help authorities know our strengths and capability against our competitors. The timing must be justified with needs and interventions for those needs. How those needs are different from others must be addressed in the bidding structure.

The bidding framework must include place of operation, valid logical reason for the place chosen for operation and how it will be managed. The details of ownership, partnership and contracts for partnership must be provided in the framework for bidding(Dursch and Muller, 2014).

Commissioning and Provision of Services

Bidding can be done by Kidco nursery, as it will help them as they will be identified by different agencies. Failure can lead to valuable suggestions that will ensure Kidco nursery manages to get required amount of funds for successful run in next bidding.

As we are non-profit organization it is necessary to know different funding agencies and types of funds which can be used for setting new nursery. There are three main types of funding which can be avail by management of new nursery. The first is through grant, second is through grant in aid and the third one is through a contract. In grant, the service level agreement is attached to ensure the money taken as grant will be spent on type of service mentioned and different processes involved. The grant in aid is a type of funding which must be not very specific like the above, and can be spent on different other factors which affects functionality of nursery. The third option is to go through contract, wherein a contract will be signed in between nursery and local authority to provide nursery services against a particular amount to be paid by the users and local authority in regular intervals.

Since, the current project is a start-up one; the start-up grant can be availed through which the costing of set up, human resources, equipment’s and physical place will be funded by government agency or through different private organizations(Bergqvist and Njberg, 2013).

Every organization or any firm first establish a need for their services in order to design services. The principle remains same for our nursery where we must establish the need for such a nursery in tower hamlet. As previously mentioned, 65% of parents are working out of which 48% have no body to look after their children. In such cases, the amount of care which must be given to the child is usually not provided. As parents look after financial status of their family, they are forced to send their children to nearby neighbor house or distance relatives. In such cases, the development of child is hampered due to negligence in care and development. The timing of their food and other requirements gets disturbed which also affects their health. In due course of time, the mental status of child also gets hampered. These issues show there is a need for nursery service where parents can leave their child with minimal tension and can take their child post job session happily. To address the above mentioned need, the nursery must be set up(Harowitz et al, 2014).

Structuring of delivery of service is a very important process in nursery set up. In most cases absence of such structured delivery systems reduces the chance of success and in turn leads to failure of the project. When a service delivery is structured, it provides a necessary insight into real time problems, issues, barriers and promoters with achievement of each delivery system. For the current project the deliverables such as choosing of place, establishment of facility, safety guidelines meeting, hiring of trained staffs must be carried out sequentially and logically. For example establishment of physical facility with all safety guidelines must be showed to funding agency within a given time period(Alfrod and Oflyn, 2012).

Framing and Construction of Bids

As a result, this will help in more funding due to systematised work process and achievement of targets within deadline. Similarly, with each delivery of service and process within the service the real time issues can be discussed and interventions can be made to avoid such issues in future. For example- hiring of staff’s might not get completed within target deadline as this job requires highly patient personalities. The issues faced during the project can be addressed before our next project which reduces our time requirement and enhances efficiency.

To deliver services claimed by our management, knowing resources within and resources outside is an extreme necessity. Resources in a group are much higher and can be used potentially to deliver service which can’t be realized by individuals of that group. Each person in the group differs in their expertise and strength areas. Therefore, knowing each individual’s strength and how they can be used in service delivery helps in efficient allocation of human resources(Collins, Fischer, Nalich, 2014). This demand before establishing the nursery Kidco nursery must recognize its own potentials.

For example- establishing nursery requires persons with an experience of taking tantrums of children and yet patiently interacting with them. Not necessarily each and every individual in the team possess such personality. It can be facilitated by group effort which lessens the burden upon single individual. Thus, a common goal can be created and the whole team can commit to achieve the goal. Similarly, it is important to address the external resources which can be beneficial for our nursery set up program. Arranging fund raising awareness or campaign in locality with one or two influential personalities can bring good amount of funding to our project which will help us in easy establishment of nursery(Landry et al, 2014).

The standards of service to be provided must meet the legal and health department guidelines for a particular region. Maintaining and adhering to quality policies demonstrates our commitment towards quality service facilitation to locality. Thus, a quality manager will be hired in order to inspect and maintain quality as per norms. For example- the drinking water system must meet stringent criteria set by health department and time to time external audits can be done by the funding agencies. The transparency in quality policy will help us in providing better service in a reasonable price range. The governance must be done by a board of members which must include two members from funding agencies(Bergqvist and Njberg, 2013). This has to be done in order to keep a check upon different process and procedures to be followed at the center.

Conclusion

The nursery set up will be a successful project if the above mentioned points are done while bidding and tendering for funds. The process must be transparent in order to raise more funds and must address different loopholes. Partnership must be sought in order to be a successful nursery in tower hamlet and provide quality service to the local authorities.

References

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Collins, C. C., Fischer, R., & Lalich, N. (2014). Enhancing Child Care for Children with Special Needs Through Technical Assistance. Journal of Family Strengths, 14(1), 9.

Dürsch, P., & Müller, J. (2014). Bidding for Nothing? The Pitfalls of overly Neutral Framing.

Feierabend, A., & Staffelbach, B. (2015). Crowding Out Reciprocity between Working Parents and Companies with Corporate Childcare. Human Resource Management.

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Landry, S. H., Zucker, T. A., Taylor, H. B., Swank, P. R., Williams, J. M., Assel, M., … & Klein, A. (2014). Enhancing early child care quality and learning for toddlers at risk: The responsive early childhood program. Developmental psychology, 50(2), 526.

Munn-Giddings, C., & Winter, R. (2013). A handbook for action research in health and social care. Routledge.

Pecora, P. J., Whittaker, J. K., Maluccio, A. N., & Barth, R. P. (2012). The child welfare challenge: Policy, practice, and research. AldineTransaction.

Roda, C., Barral, S., Ravelomanantsoa, H., Dusséaux, M., Tribout, M., Le Moullec, Y., & Momas, I. (2011). Assessment of indoor environment in Paris child day care centers. Environmental Research, 111(8), 1010-1017.

Saraceno, C. (2011). Childcare needs and childcare policies: A multidimensional issue. Current Sociology, 59(1), 78-96.