Back

National Centre for Supervision of Parent-Infant Relationships

DHSC is seeking to secure the services of a supplier to create and run a National Centre for Supervision of Parent-Infant Relationships. The National Centre will be expected to provide specialist parent-infant relationship clinical supervision to 75 local authorities receiving DHSC funding to deliver Best Start in Life Healthy Babies services. The successful supplier will be expected to manage the grant funding in its entirety, from designing and establishing the service, delivering clinical supervision sessions, building a community amongst supervisees and supervisors that provides learning opportunities around the role of supervision in clinical practice and evaluating the impact of the intervention through a lens of continuous improvement.

  • Opening date: (Midnight)
  • Closing date: (Midnight)

Get updates about this grant

Sign up for updates
Start new application

Contents

Summary

Introduction: 

Through the 2021-2025 Family Hubs and Start for Life programme, funding was allocated to the 75 participating local authorities to improve access for families to bespoke parent-infant relationship support. The vast majority of this funding went directly to 75 programme LAs and a small proportion of the budget was held centrally to develop a series of national initiatives to support delivery.  As part of this, funding was allocated to the development and delivery of a National Centre for Supervision of Parent-Infant Relationships that provided local authorities with access to specialist parent-infant relationship clinical supervision where there wasn’t capacity or capability locally.  The National Centre has been a great success, and we are looking to continue the delivery through the DHSC funded element of the Best Start Family Hub and Healthy Babies Programme. 

Background: 

Good parent-infant relationship support is underpinned by a knowledgeable, skilled and confident workforce. This funding will enable the workforce to have the capacity and capability to support families with parent-infant relationship difficulties. Ensuring the workforce is appropriately supervised will be essential. 

There is a need for greater capacity of clinical supervision for parent-infant relationship support  

Clinical supervision is an essential part of working therapeutically. We know that local authorities do not have clinical expertise in parent-infant relationships. One of the main challenges to rapidly expanding parent-infant relationships support is access to clinical supervisors with expertise in parent-infant relationships.   

Supervision is fundamental to good clinical governance, ensuring safe and effective delivery of care. In this context, supervision is a place for practitioners to:    

  • Seek support, advice, and guidance on how to manage their clinical work. This might include care planning or delivering specific therapeutic interventions.   

  • Reflect on the impact of their clinical work on themselves, preventing burnout and promoting reflective practice.   

  • Learn more about ways of supporting babies and their families. This might include technical knowledge sharing (e.g., how a baby’s stress response system develops) or sharing therapeutic process (e.g., how to contain psychological distress in therapeutic sessions).    

The scope and scale of investment in parent-infant support will vary across 75 local areas depending on local needs, system provision and workforce pressures. Therefore identifying, monitoring and responding to local demand for parent-infant supervision will be crucial element of the grant funding. 

Requirement: 

DHSC is seeking to secure the services of a supplier to create and run a National Centre for Supervision of Parent-Infant Relationships. The National Centre will be expected to provide clinical supervision to 75 local authorities receiving DHSC funding to deliver Best Start in Life Healthy Babies services. The successful supplier will be expected to manage the grant funding in its entirety, from designing and establishing the service, delivering clinical supervision sessions through to evaluating the impact of the intervention. 

In designing and implementing the service, the supplier should consider the following key deliverables: 

  • Exploring and understanding the needs of eligible LAs: Using the grant funding, the supplier will look to build an understanding of the clinical supervision requirements of the eligible LAs and maintain this understanding over the course of the funded period. 

  • Staffing: The supplier will be required to develop and deliver a staffing model that supports the delivery of clinical supervision to meet the requirements of the eligible LAs. 

  • Clinical Supervision: The supplier will be required to deliver or facilitate the delivery of clinical supervision sessions in accordance with the needs assessment. We are keen for suppliers to explore innovative ways to deliver clinical supervision sessions to a variety of practitioners but, as a minimum, they must: 

  • Cover a wide range of parent-infant relationship interventions, including VIG 

  • Meet the supervision needs of a wide range of practitioners including the supervisors themselves 

  • Be able to be deliver flexibly, for example online and group sessions 

We would also expect suppliers to evidence the quality and impact of clinical supervision delivery over the course of the funding period. 

  • Community and Learning: The supplier will be expected to develop a community amongst supervisees and supervisors that provides materials and learning opportunities around parent-infant relationships and the role of supervision to support practitioners in their learning and development through their use of the centre 

  • Communication: The supplier is expected to have a thorough communications plan for raising awareness of the National Centre across the eligible local authorities.  

  • Continuous Improvement: The supplier will be expected to continuously monitor and evaluate the impact of the National Centre over the course of the funded period and regularly provide updates to the Department with suggestions for continuous improvement. The supplier will also be expected to provide a full evaluation of the National Centre at the end of the funded period that sets out the impact of the support. 

Expected Demand: 

Demand for supervision from eligible LAs is likely to vary depending on local circumstances. The current National Centre provides supervision to 48 of the 75 eligible LAs to over 200 practitioners. Any supplier should be able to generate capacity to deliver supervision to all 75 eligible LAs should there be demand for this.

Eligibility

The National Centre for Supervision of Parent-Infant Relationships will be expected to provide clinical supervision to 75 local authorities receiving DHSC funding to deliver Best Start in Life Healthy Babies services.  The successful supplier will be expected to manage the grant in its entirety, from designing and establishing the service, delivering clinical supervision sessions, building a community amongst supervisees and supervisors that provides learning opportunities around the role of supervision in clinical practice and evaluating the impact of the intervention through a lens of continuous improvement. 

It is therefore strongly desirable for the supplier to: 

  • Have experience working with parent-infant relationship teams across England 

  • Have experience of delivering or facilitating the delivery of clinical supervision services 

  • Have delivered or supported the delivery of clinical supervision in person and/or online settings 

  • Have the capacity to set up and launch the national centre for supervision within a reasonable timeframe, ideally by 1st April 2026.

Objectives

The overarching objective of this grant is to make specialist parent infant relationship clinical supervision (including VIG supervision and supervision of supervisors where there is demand) available to local authorities who do not have the capacity or capability themselves at present.  

Within this, we are also looking to: 

  • Develop and maintain our understanding of the need for clinical supervision services across LAs and any associated skill gaps 

  • Develop and maintain an understanding of the most effective and efficient ways to deliver clinical supervision to LAs across the country 

  • Develop a community amongst supervisees and supervisors that provides materials and learning opportunities around parent-infant relationships and the role of supervision in clinical practice to support practitioners in their learning and development through their use of the centre 

  • Receive an evaluation of the model for delivery of the National Centre with recommendations for continuous improvement over the course of delivery and in future years once the grant has ended including consideration of how supervision support is sustained beyond the grant

Dates

Grant Launched and Application Window Open - 17th December 2025 - 30th January 2026

Moderation of Application and Supplier Selection - 2nd February 2026 - 13th February 2026

Grant Awarded and Supplier Mobilisation Period - Mid-February 2026 - 31st March 2026

Grant Launch - 1st April 2026

How to apply

n/a

Supporting information

Scoring Information 

Each application will be assessed against the following principles. Your proposal and your justification around how you will meet each of the 6 deliverables of the grant will be assessed with a score of 5 against each principle.  

Assessment principles: 

  1. Deliverability and readiness (20%): Proposals must be reasonable within the scope of the funding and time parameters available. Proposals should establish that any relevant strategic or operational partners are also committed to the delivery of any proposed model. Proposal must set out readiness or estimated timescale for implementation of each deliverable. 

  2. Ambitious (10%): We are keen for bidders to submit proposals that are innovative, creative and ambitious. We are keen to see new ideas for delivering clinical supervision to local authorities in a way that meets their needs. 

  3. Expertise in parent-infant relationships and/or providing clinical supervision (10%): Bidders should make clear their expertise in parent-infant relationships and/or providing clinical supervision and how they will use this in making clinical supervision available to local authorities. 

  4. Evidence Building (20%): Bids should clearly set out how bidders will test, monitor and evaluate their proposal over the course of its delivery, as well as how they will learn and adapt based on feedback received. The proposal should clearly set out a commitment to collecting evidence and using this to continually improve the service.  

  5. Safe (20%): All proposals should have safety at their core. Bidders should clearly set out what will be put in place to ensure safety of supervisors, practitioners and patients alike. This should include considerations such as safeguarding, meeting professional standards and confidentiality.   

An example scoring matrix: 

Score 

Understanding of Assessment Principles 

Achievability Details 

1 

Application provides no evidence of understanding the assessment principles 

Application provides no evidence of how assessment principles will be delivered 

2 

Application provides a basic but limited understanding of the assessment principles  

Application provides basic detail around how assessment principles will be delivered but there are limitations when it comes to feasibility of doing so in timeline and budget 

3 

Application provides a some understanding of each of the assessment principles 

Application provides some detail around how assessment principles will be delivered but significant detail is missing 

4 

Application provides a clear understanding of each of the assessment principles  

Application provides clear detail around how assessment principles will be delivered but some detail is missing 

5 

Application provides a very strong understanding of each assessment principle  

Application clearly details how each of the assessment principles will be delivered 

Assessing Cost and Value for Money (20%): 

The costings you put forward as part of your application will also be assessed with a score out of 3.  

Cost scoring matrix: 

Score 

Application content 

1 

Application does not include details of costings or costings listed are unreasonable 

or irreconcilable 

2 

Costings appear sensible and proportionate to what the funding is looking to deliver but there is limited to detail on how good value for money will be achieved 

3 

Costings appear sensible and proportionate to what the funding is looking to deliver and there is significant detail on how this will achieve good value for money