Service Design for Embedding Positive Cultures in Residential Care across Wales

What is required / ‘The Requirements’

We are seeking a supplier with the expertise and experience to undertake the following requirements:

(a) Co‑design and Testing of a New Support Service (Phase 2)

The supplier must:

• Work collaboratively with Social Care Wales, Care Inspectorate Wales and sector partners to identify and recruit six adult social care providers to act as pilot sites, using agreed selection criteria and ethical engagement processes.
• Design and facilitate co‑design workshops with leaders, managers, frontline staff and stakeholders to develop success criteria and design principles for the support service. Including a shared understanding of the behaviours, conditions and practices that enable positive cultures.
• Develop a Theory of Change that will guide the design and testing of the support service.
• Support assessments of each pilot site's positive culture position at the start of testing, mid point and end point.
• Deliver a programme of testing activities with the sites, which may include coaching, mentoring, team learning sessions, mini‑sprints and other supportive interventions tailored to local needs.
• Carry out site visits or virtual consultations to understand day‑to‑day practice, challenges and opportunities for improvement.
• Produce site‑specific action plans in collaboration with Responsible Individuals, Registered Managers and staff.
• Refine the support service iteratively based on feedback and learning from pilot sites.
• Produce a service design report summarising:

~ What was designed and why

~ How it was tested

~ Lessons learned

~ Recommendations for scaling and sustainability.

(b) Co‑design and Testing of a Tool (Phase 3)

The supplier must:

• Facilitate co‑design workshops with stakeholders to agree success criteria, functions and design principles for the tool.
• Contribute to a measurement framework aligned with:

~ The Positive Cultures principles

~ Strengths‑based practice

~ Compassionate leadership models

• Design a bilingual, accessible tool, capable of:

~ Helping organisations understand their current culture position

~ Producing tailored action plans

~ Supporting organisations to manage and sustain improvement over time

~ Enabling practical reporting on culture indicators

• Test and refine the tool with the same six pilot sites from phase 2 through iterative cycles of feedback and adaptation.
• Produce a tool design and testing report with recommendations for future development and scale-up.

(c) Collaboration and Learning

The supplier must:

• Work sensitively alongside leaders and managers with different levels of knowledge and confidence.
• Maintain regular communication with the Social Care Wales project team to ensure alignment with project aims and emerging insights.
• Work constructively with a separately commissioned evaluation partner, providing agreed data, access and evidence throughout the project.
• Draw on and integrate Social Care Wales’ existing offers (e.g., compassionate leadership training, wellbeing resources, strengths based practice, workforce support and research, innovation) where relevant.
• Deliver a programme of co‑design engagement activities, including workshops, interviews and focus groups. We anticipate a minimum 20 engagement sessions in total across the project. This figure is indicative and may be refined collaboratively during project initiation and informed by stakeholder and user research to ensure the most effective approach.
• Work openly and share learning in real time, along with reporting at key milestones.

(d) Shared Requirements (Applicable to both Lots)

Suppliers appointed to either Lot must:

• Start delivery in July 2026.
• Work in close partnership with Social Care Wales, while respecting the distinct roles of delivery and evaluation.
• Collaborate effectively with the supplier appointed to the other Lot to support the Programme’s Theory of Change and share data with one another to inform both lots.
• Engage constructively with adult social care providers, leaders and frontline staff with varying levels of confidence and capacity.
• Draw on and integrate Social Care Wales’s existing services and resources where relevant, including:

~ Compassionate Leadership training programme

~ Social Care Fair Work Forum

~Workforce wellbeing programme

~ Strengths based practice programme

~ Attraction and recruitment support

~ Insight collective website

~ Innovation Coaching service

• Share learning openly, participate in governance and reporting arrangements, and contribute to dissemination of findings.

Lot 2 will focus on the independent evaluation of Phases 2 and 3. This includes the development and delivery of an evaluation and impact framework to assess the design and testing activity undertaken through Lot 1.

Lot 2 will:

• Evaluate the leadership support offer and tool(s) developed under Lot 1
• Assess outcomes, learning and early impact
• Synthesise findings and generate evidence to inform future policy development, practice improvement and potential wider roll-out.

Lot 2 will not be involved in the delivery of design of the support being evaluated.

What is required / ‘The Requirements’

(a) Evaluation Requirements (Phases 2 & 3)

This phase will develop an evaluation and impact framework which forms part of a wider programme to support positive cultures in adult care services

Lot 2 is for undertaking an independent, mixed methods evaluation of the User research and codesign and testing of:

• a leadership support service to nurturing positive cultures; and
• a tool for implementing, measuring and evaluating positive cultures.

The evaluation will synthesise data from Phase 2 & 3 to assess outcomes, identify lessons learned, and inform future policy and practice. It will ensure accountability and support continuous improvement across the sector.

The evaluation will:

• Assess the extent to which the support offer and tool were delivered as in-tended and detail any adaptations
• Explore:

~ whether the programme achieved it's desired aims,

~ the factors that influenced the impact of the programme and whether these varied across test sites,

~ what difference the programme made to staff, management, the or-ganisation and people accessing care and support, and

~ the influence of wider systemic factors had on the impact of the pro-gramme.

• Explore the outcomes from the programme including:

~ Any positive or negative outcomes and impacts from the programme,

~ The factors that contributed to those outcomes

~ whether any systemic barriers need to be addressed to improve outcomes from the work.

• Develop theory of change alongside the programme provider (building on the Rayne Foundation expected outcomes) using contribution analysis to:

~ Map intended outcomes,

~ explore contribution towards outcomes,

~ monitor ongoing outputs and explore changes to workforce and provider behaviour and;

~ Explore any systemic barriers impacting on the programme.

• Assess positive cultures at the test sites at the start, mid-point and end of testing
• Involve lived experience and workforce voices wherever possible
• Measure changes in behaviours, leadership, wellbeing, culture, practice and collaboration
• Assess how, where and why positive cultures emerge
• Highlight barriers and enablers to positive cultures
• Explore implications for policy, commissioning and regulation
• Outline considerations and recommendations for upscaling the programme going forward.

The Supplier will need to work in close collaboration with Social Care Wales, providing regular updates to ensure the work remains aligned with the project’s aims and adheres to the contract deadline.

The successful Supplier must work closely with both the co-design supplier and Rayne Foundation evaluators (Bean Consultancy) to ensure reporting requirements and outcomes measures are addressed.

The successful Supplier will need to work closely with the co design supplier in the design of the evaluation framework to ensure effective monitoring data is collected throughout the delivery process to measure the impact of the support offer. The Successful supplier should therefore have experience of working in partnership to design and collect relevant data to ensure the most effective use of time and resources for all parties involved.

The successful Supplier must demonstrate:

• Expertise in mixed-method evaluation in social care contexts.
• Ability to design and apply evaluation frameworks that measure positive cul-ture changes, wellbeing outcomes and systemic change.
• Experience in working with suppliers and partners in capturing agreed data as well as synthesising data from multiple workstreams.
• Ability to produce clear, bilingual reports and presentations.

(b) Shared Requirements (Applicable to both Lots)

Suppliers appointed to either Lot must:

• Start delivery in July 2026.
• Work in close partnership with Social Care Wales, while respecting the distinct roles of delivery and evaluation.
• Collaborate effectively with the supplier appointed to the other Lot to support the Programme’s Theory of Change and share data with one another to inform both lots.
• Engage constructively with adult social care providers, leaders and frontline staff with varying levels of confidence and capacity.
• Draw on and integrate Social Care Wales’s existing services and resources where relevant, including:

~ Compassionate Leadership training programme

~ Social Care Fair Work Forum

~ Workforce wellbeing programme

~ Strengths based practice programme

~ Attraction and recruitment support

~ Insight collective website

~ Innovation Coaching service

• Share learning openly, participate in governance and reporting arrangements, and contribute to dissemination of findings.