The West Sussex County Council GM Framework for the provision of Accommodation and Support for 16+ Older Looked After Young People and Care Leavers is one of the few open routes into a £45.0m children's services pipeline in the South East, which makes it both a long-term placement opportunity and a regulatory minefield if you do not split the cohort correctly from the start.

For some providers, it is the natural progression from existing supported accommodation or leaving care work. For others, the Ofsted registration gap will stop the submission at the qualification stage. In a few cases, the right move is to enter the framework for the 18+ care leaver cohort only and leave 16/17 placements to providers already registered under the Supported Accommodation (England) Regulations 2023.

But the entry rules are not simple. The framework spans two distinct regulatory worlds. Sixteen and seventeen-year-old relevant looked-after children sit under Ofsted registration. Eighteen-plus care leavers sit under Children Act 1989 leaving care duties and, where eligible needs exist, the Care Act 2014. Conflating the two in a single method statement is the fastest way to lose marks.

This guide explains what the West Sussex 16+ and Care Leavers Framework actually is, the cohort and the regulatory split that every method statement has to respect, the key scoring battlegrounds providers underestimate, the evaluator-side pitfalls that lose marks, and the win-rate playbook we apply on similar children's services submissions.

What is the West Sussex 16+ and Care Leavers Framework?

It is an open, continuously refreshed framework of providers approved to deliver accommodation and support for 16+ Older Looked After Young People and Care Leavers across West Sussex. Once on the framework, you become eligible for call-off referrals as the Council places individual young people into matched placements.

The framework was established and effective from 1 September 2021 by West Sussex County Council. From January 2022, the framework has been continually open to new Service Providers to join at any time throughout the Agreement Term. New entrants are assessed when they apply rather than at a single tender window. The current published deadline of 29 August 2026 reflects the next reopening point for new applications.

The total framework value is £45.0m. That figure covers the full lifetime placement spend across all providers on the framework, not a single call-off. Volume to any individual provider depends on how closely your described capability matches the referrals that come through the West Sussex Children's Commissioning team.

NOTE: this framework straddles two regulatory regimes in a way that catches new entrants every reopening. 16/17 placements requiring Supported Accommodation are Ofsted-regulated under the 2023 Regulations. 18+ care leaver placements are not automatically Ofsted-regulated. The method statement has to be explicit about which cohort each part of your service covers.

Two things matter from day one. First, the framework submission is the only marketing document you will get. Once you are on the framework, the Council matches young people to providers on the strength of how you described your service when you joined. Second, call-offs go to the provider whose Setting Plan and described capability most closely matches the individual young person, not necessarily the largest provider on the framework.

Who is the cohort and what statutory framework applies?

The cohort is two related but legally distinct groups:

• 16+ Older Looked After Young People - 16 and 17-year-olds still in the care of West Sussex County Council, who need accommodation and support as part of their care plan. These are "relevant" or "eligible" children in Children Act 1989 language. Their accommodation sits under the Supported Accommodation (England) Regulations 2023 and the provider must be registered with Ofsted.
• Care Leavers - young people aged 18 and over who have left care and are entitled to leaving care support under Children Act 1989 Sections 23B-24D. The Care Leavers (England) Regulations 2010 frame the entitlement. The Children and Social Work Act 2017 extended Personal Adviser support to age 25 where the care leaver requests it.

The statutory framework for the 16/17 cohort is Children Act 1989 for looked-after status, Supported Accommodation (England) Regulations 2023 for the registration and quality standard, and Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023 for child protection. Section 47 enquiries for child protection concerns are led by the local authority; the provider supports the enquiry, secures immediate safety, records, refers, shares information and contributes to the protection plan.

The statutory framework for the 18+ care leaver cohort is Children Act 1989 for leaving care duties, Care Leavers (England) Regulations 2010 for the Pathway Plan and Personal Adviser obligation, and Care Act 2014 where the care leaver has eligible needs as an adult. Where a safeguarding concern arises for an 18+ care leaver, the local authority makes or causes the Care Act 2014 Section 42 enquiry to be made; the provider supports the enquiry, secures immediate safety, records, refers, shares information and contributes to the safeguarding plan.

The Pathway Plan is the document that drives everything. It is reviewed at least every 6 months. Every Setting Plan and every matching decision has to map back to the Pathway Plan goals on accommodation, education, employment, health, finance, relationships and identity.

What are the key scoring battlegrounds?

Children's services framework submissions usually score on five fronts. Get all five and you are on the framework. Get one wrong and the application stalls at evaluation.

1. Regulatory registration and standing. For the 16/17 cohort the Council will check your Ofsted registration under the Supported Accommodation (England) Regulations 2023, your most recent inspection outcome, the date of registration and any conditions on the registration. If you are unregistered and bidding only for the 18+ cohort, the submission has to be explicit that you are not seeking 16/17 referrals. Cohort drift in the method statement reads as registration confusion and loses marks.

2. Local operating footprint. The Council will want named existing services or staff bases inside or close to West Sussex. If you have no current presence in the BN, PO, RH or GU postcodes that cover the West Sussex footprint, the application is harder. You can still qualify with a credible mobilisation plan but the submission has to evidence a real local recruitment route and a named locality lead you will appoint inside 30 days of award.

3. Workforce and recruitment evidence. Your application has to show how you will staff placements with named role definitions, enhanced DBS checks for working with children where relevant, right-to-work process, induction route, supervision and reflective practice cadence, retention rate and contingency for short-notice cover. Generic "we recruit trauma-informed staff" sentences score poorly. Named systems, named supervision cycles, named retention figures score well.

4. Setting Plan, matching and Pathway Plan integration. The Council expects an enabling, strengths-based, trauma-informed approach that maps every placement to the young person's Pathway Plan. The submission has to show how you receive a referral, how you match the placement to the Setting Plan, how you build the support plan against the Pathway Plan goals, and how you involve the young person and their Personal Adviser in every review. Outcome Star (or specifically Teen Star and Recovery Star for relevant cohorts), Signs of Safety or a comparable framework named in the submission helps.

5. Quality assurance and safeguarding. The Council expects a registered safeguarding lead, a clear referral pathway into both the West Sussex Safeguarding Children Partnership (for 16/17) and the West Sussex Safeguarding Adults Board (for 18+), a documented complaints and feedback process, and an internal audit cycle. The submission has to evidence accurate wording on enquiries - Section 47 Children Act 1989 for the 16/17 cohort, Section 42 Care Act 2014 for the 18+ cohort. Mixing the two is a regulatory red flag.

What is the TenderLab perspective on this opportunity?

The framework is worth getting onto if West Sussex is a real geographic priority, your registration position (Ofsted for 16/17, or clarity about a 18+ only offer) is clean, and you can hold open capacity for matched call-offs without burning cash.

It is not worth pursuing if your registration is in dispute, your closest registered office is more than 90 minutes from the West Sussex footprint, or you cannot afford to qualify without knowing the volume of call-offs you will see in year one. Children's services placements demand fast referral response, trauma-informed mobilisation and Pathway Plan alignment from day one of placement.

Where the fit is right, the long-running structure of the framework rewards consistency. Providers who score well in the reopening tend to see call-offs in the following 12 months as commissioners learn to trust the way you describe your service. The framework is essentially a long-form matching document. What you wrote when you joined is what the Children's Commissioning team reads when a young person matches.

Across 200+ submissions in UK health and social care, our pattern recognition on children's services frameworks is that the highest-scoring submissions almost always name a single accountable manager, a single primary care planning system, a single supervision and reflective practice cycle and a single safeguarding lead. Generality reads as weakness. Specificity reads as operational truth.

What pitfalls lose providers marks?

The five we see most often on 16+ and care leaver framework submissions:

• Cohort drift. Writing one method statement that covers "young people" without distinguishing 16/17 from 18+. The two groups sit under different regulations, different safeguarding routes and different commissioning leads. Every paragraph has to be cohort-clear.
• Regulator contamination. Mixing CQC language into an Ofsted-registered Supported Accommodation answer, or referencing CQC Quality Statements for a service that is not CQC-regulated. The 16/17 service sits under Ofsted's Supported Accommodation Regulations 2023. The 18+ service may sit under CQC where personal care is delivered, or under no registered regulator where the support is non-personal-care enabling.
• Vague workforce numbers. "We have a trauma-informed team" with no headcount, no ratio, no supervision cadence, no turnover figure, no retention rate. The Council needs to see whether you can actually staff a placement at short notice.
• Mobilisation hand-waving. "We will mobilise quickly using our established processes" is not a plan. The Council expects a phased 30-day mobilisation against named milestones - referral receipt, Setting Plan, matching, induction of the young person, key worker assignment, first Pathway Plan review touchpoint.
• Missing Pathway Plan integration. Writing a generic care plan answer that does not show how your support plan maps to the Pathway Plan goals on accommodation, education, employment, health, finance, relationships and identity. The Pathway Plan is the statutory anchor for every care leaver placement.

What is the win-rate playbook for getting on the framework?

Six approaches we apply on every comparable children's services framework submission:

1. Open every method statement with a 1-2 sentence direct answer. The evaluator scoring a children's services framework submission usually has dozens to read. Front-loading the answer means they can score against the rubric inside the first 100 words and read the rest as confirmation.

2. Name your operational mechanism in every paragraph. Named manager. Named system. Named supervision cycle. Named reflective practice frequency. Named audit cadence. We track every paragraph against a 4-anchor pattern (Approach, Mechanism, Frequency, Outcome). If a paragraph cannot answer all four, it gets rewritten.

3. Mirror the Council's vocabulary. Where the spec says "Setting Plan", say Setting Plan. Where it says "Pathway Plan", anchor to the Pathway Plan. Where it lists outcomes, write your method statement to land directly on those outcomes. Evaluator pattern-matching is a real scoring lift.

4. Embed one verified case example per scored section. A named, anonymised, real placement outcome reads as proof in a way that policy summary cannot. The example needs five Ws (who, what, when, where, why) and an outcome quantifier. Our work on the Southend Children's Residential contract, for example, evidenced how a 16-year-old with complex behavioural needs was matched, settled and supported into a stable placement through a named trauma-informed framework, a named key worker, and weekly reflective practice over a 12-week stabilisation window.

5. Show your QA dashboard. Where the platform allows attachments, include one redacted screenshot of your audit dashboard or QA scorecard. Framework submissions that include visible internal QA evidence consistently score higher than those that rely on policy text alone.

6. Submit the Tender Readiness Audit before you draft. Open framework reopenings reject submissions that fail qualification checks long before scoring begins. A short readiness audit catches expired Ofsted registration documents, missing safeguarding policy versions, outdated DBS process notes and missing cyber controls before the submission goes in. Cheaper than missing the reopening window.

What happens after qualification: mobilisation and call-offs?

Once you are on the framework, the West Sussex Children's Commissioning team issues call-offs as individual young people come up for placement. There is no guaranteed volume.

The first 30 days after qualification matter. Set up your named West Sussex locality lead, register on the Council's preferred call-off portal, agree your referral protocol with the Children's Commissioning team and the leaving care team, and confirm your accommodation portfolio for the cohort split you have qualified to deliver.

For each call-off, expect the commissioning team to send a referral pack with the young person's care plan or Pathway Plan summary, indicative budget, identified risks and safeguarding history. Your turnaround on whether you can match the referral should be inside 5 working days. Slow responses move referrals to other providers on the framework quickly.

The post-go-live KPI regime is light by call-off volume but heavy by individual outcome. Expect a quarterly framework review meeting with the Children's Commissioning team, a documented Setting Plan review inside the first 6 weeks of every placement, a Pathway Plan review touchpoint at least every 6 months for care leavers, and an annual framework review against the original submission.

Frequently asked questions

Is the West Sussex 16+ and Care Leavers Framework open to new providers now?

Yes. The framework has been continually open to new providers since January 2022 and the current published reopening deadline is 29 August 2026. New applications are assessed at the next reopening point rather than at a single tender window.

Do I need Ofsted registration to apply?

If you intend to take 16 and 17-year-old placements, yes. The Supported Accommodation (England) Regulations 2023 require Ofsted registration for providers accommodating 16/17-year-olds in supported accommodation. If you are bidding for 18+ care leaver placements only, Ofsted registration is not required - but the submission has to be explicit about the cohort split.

Do I need CQC registration to apply?

Only where the 18+ care leaver service involves regulated personal care. For non-regulated enabling and supported accommodation, CQC registration is not required - but the Council will still assess your quality assurance, safeguarding and workforce evidence to the same standard.

How is the framework different from an approved list or a DPS?

A framework has a defined Agreement Term and a defined pool of providers, with continuous entry across the term in this case. An approved list operates similarly under Light Touch arrangements. A Dynamic Purchasing System has a strict process for entry and call-off. The West Sussex GM Framework sits in the open-framework category - defined term, continuous entry, and call-off based on Setting Plan match rather than fixed lot allocation.

Can I qualify without a local West Sussex office?

Yes, but the submission needs a named mobilisation plan with a local recruitment route, a named locality lead appointment date and a credible explanation of how you will deliver accommodation, support, supervision and emergency response across the West Sussex geography.

What is the difference between a 16/17 placement and a care leaver placement?

A 16/17 placement is for a young person still in the care of West Sussex County Council under Children Act 1989. The accommodation is Ofsted-regulated Supported Accommodation under the 2023 Regulations. A care leaver placement is for a young person aged 18 to 25 who has left care and is entitled to leaving care support under Children Act 1989 Sections 23B-24D and the Care Leavers (England) Regulations 2010. The 18+ placement is not automatically Ofsted-regulated. The Personal Adviser obligation and Pathway Plan apply to both groups in different ways.

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• Supported Accommodation tender bid writing services
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• Southend Children's Residential: how we secured the contract
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Further reading on the framework: Applying corporate parenting principles (gov.uk) | Supported Accommodation (England) Regulations 2023 (legislation.gov.uk)