Advice Services

The subject matter of this process relates to the delivery of services which are listed in Schedule 3 of the Public Contract Regulations 2015. Oxfordshire County Council has awarded a contract for an advice service to give specialist advice to Oxfordshire residents to replace these services. The aim of the service is to support people to live their lives as independently, successfully and safely as possible within the community, to enhance well-being and improve people’s choices. The service will achieve this by providing free, independent and impartial advice to assist people with benefits, debt, budgeting and other financial and welfare issues, thereby addressing underlying issues and health inequalities and maximising incomes, helping people to make the best use of the money available to them. The service will also provide a preventative offer to people in the community, providing pro-active training and advice for people to enable them to develop good budgeting skills and money management before they reach a crisis point. The service will provide ‘subject matter expert’ consultancy to support colleagues in local government, health and voluntary and community organisations who are working with people who need specialist money advice. The service will also provide training support to other information and advice services across the county to develop and maintain key knowledge and skills around benefits and entitlements. The service will take a whole person approach to addressing people’s needs in order to tackle health inequalities and improve health and wellbeing. The Service Provider will have an in-depth knowledge of the issues faced by Oxfordshire residents and will be well connected to the many sources of support in the county to allow for seamless cross referrals and signposting e.g. social prescribing and/or connection to referrals from the NHS. The service will be available and accessible in all parts of the county through the remote access. The Service Provider will have a particular focus on ensuring that the Service is promoted to and accessible to people living in the Lower Super Output Areas (LSOA’s) in the county which are classified within the 20% most deprived nationally according to the IMD 2019 and most likely to experience inequalities, and to people with protected characteristics. The contract period will commence on 1 November 2024. The contract term will be 3 years, with an option for the Council to extend by up to a further 2 years.