As a market leading Bid Writing Consultancy we have developed a clear understanding of how to approach all types of tender, including those in the Health and Social Care sector. For an individual unfamiliar with bidding, the lack of experience can sometimes drive them to overlook what the contracting authority wants, confusing it with what they think they want.
Regardless of the opportunity, the first step in writing a bid should always be to break the question down. By addressing, in your response, the constituent parts of the question you can ensure there are no gaps in your response and have covered everything the authority want. To demonstrate this, London Borough of Barnet have released an opportunity to join the framework of Approved Providers for the Provision of Home and Community Support. One of the questions can be broken down like this…
“Please describe how you will offer a high-quality service in Barnet, which supports a strengths-based approach to care and maximises resident independence?
Your response should include how you will:
- Build and deliver a responsive, person-centred, flexible service around the needs of Barnet’s diverse population
- Proactively support residents to prevent their needs escalating
- Ensure a timely and reliable service is delivered
- Overcome key challenges you expect to face, and what your understand of these is
- Upskill staff to have expertise. You do not need to include details of mandatory training in this section.
- Work as an organisation to continually improve services and to deliver good outcomes for service user/residents. Please provide an example.”
The word limit for this response is 1000 words and conveniently the authority have listed six key points to cover in the response. To begin with, each of the points should be taken as their own questions and account for approximately 160 words. Some of these questions can be broken down further, for example, the final bullet point becomes:
“How will you work as an organisation to continually improve services? (c80 words)
What are the good outcomes for service users/residents? (c80 words)
Provide an example. (c80 words)”
By breaking down questions in this way, the task of writing a response to a 1000 word question becomes less daunting. Your responses will also become much clearer, which will ensure it will not be marked down for missing key points of information.
If you need any support with the bid writing process, please contact our team of expert bid writers.