The Adult Social Care Big Conversation Listening Events

The consultant shall deliver the Adult Social Care Big Conversation Listening Events across West Northamptonshire.

The aims and objectives:

a) design and deliver the programme in close collaboration with the Coproduction Board, Council staff and partners, including:

i. finding and engaging people who draw upon social care, especially seldom heard people / diverse groups / 'hard to reach' groups

ii. communicating with and involve unpaid carers

iii. bringing creative ideas and thoughts on the best way to engage more people to get them involved.

b) deliver the programme across June to August2026, that will:

i. capture feedback that is a true reflection of what is said during the programme.

ii. focus on what people and their carers are saying.

iii. create a safe and empathetic environment for people and carers to share their views.

c) develop methods to obtain the views of Council staff regarding the current priorities and what they are doing to meet them.

d) develop methods to obtain the views of the Council's external providers and partners about Adult Social Care and the current priorities.

e) Gather views on the recent Care Quality Commission assessment of the council

f) analyse the findings and produce a report that helps the Council set its priorities for the next Local Account 2026.

Engagement:

a) provide the capacity and expertise to coproduce and work alongside people with lived experience, colleagues including:

i. Strategic Commissioning to support co-production and engagement with people and unpaid carers who draw on social care.

ii. Quality Market Management for engagement with external care providers.

iii. Principal social worker and the practice development team.

iv. Locality and Community Development Managers

v. Community Development and Inclusion Officers

vi. Communications team

b) provide knowledge and experience of engaging seldom heard groups/people, explicitly those groups that have not normally engaged with the Council in the past, for example:

i. people living in residential care settings including working age residents.

ii. people living in Supported Living and Shared Lives accommodation.

iii. people who have experienced safeguarding situations.

iv. people with complex needs for example people with learning disability, autism, mental health needs or people with multiple disadvantages.

v. sensory disability groups

vi. faith and community groups

vii. People from ethnic minorities

viii. Traveller & Roma community

ix. global majority communities

x. street homeless

c) use the council's Big Conversation project group, as a source to identify seldom heard groups/people and work with WNC and Expert's by Experience to gain feedback.

d) engage and work with our external providers to plan and deliver the programme

e) provide experience of different ways to engage people including surveys, face-to-face and one-to-one conversations.

Delivery of the listening events:

a) work with people who have lived experience and make this central to the delivery of the programme.

b) produce a project plan, detailing values, approach, timeline, activity and making coproduction central to delivery.

c) design and deliver large scale programme across West Northamptonshire in at least each of the Local Area Partnerships (LAPS), creating safe place for people to be open and honest about their experience of social care.

d) ensure the programme is inclusive and accessible.

e) ensure the venues for the programme support wide scale engagement including consideration for location, accessibility, parking facilities, public transport.

f) create an environment for the programme so that people can be open and honest.

g) arrange smaller listening events to capture people with a range of needs and diversity.

h) consider ways of capturing people's feedback on their safeguarding experience. i.e. anonymous Safeguarding Survey already in existence.

i) respond to people feedback at the events appropriately with empathy and understanding.

j) ask people how the Council is doing against delivering the priories set out in council strategies

k) have the ability to widen questions on a specific topic, for example, housing can include adaptations, mental health support and other areas of support.