Decision details

That the Cabinet Member for Health and Communities approves a grant to the value of £7,800 to be made to Derbyshire Alcohol Advice Service (DAAS) for the development and delivery of bespoke online and face to face Drug and Alcohol Awareness for Employees and Managers Workshops as part of the Derbyshire County Council Public Health funded ‘Healthy Workplaces Derbyshire’ initiative.

·         Additional grant funding would enable creation of added staffing capacity within the organisation to deliver the new initiative without adversely impacting on existing commissioned services;

·         The chosen provider (Derbyshire Alcohol Advice Service) has an established and proven record of development and delivery of comparable training materials;

·         Existing networks and relationships available via commissioned substance misuse services could be leveraged to target and promote the new initiative;

·         Workshop content could be developed which would mirror existing commissioned substance misuse service messaging to ensure consistency of approach.

Option 1 (Not recommended) - seek expressions of interest from suitably qualified training delivery organisations through a traditional procurement via Procurement Protocol 7(B).  Whilst this option would likely have resulted in suitable providers of training expressing an interest in the work it came with the challenge of having to then integrate this with existing related substance misuse messaging and service provision to ensure consistent messaging and appropriate onward referral;

Option 2 (Not recommended) – explore the potential for an existing commissioned substance misuse provider to develop and deliver this work as ‘business as usual’ as part of an existing contracted service.  Whilst this option would ensure the workshop content was consistent with wider substance misuse service delivery, it was felt that it would create an additional pressure and potentially detract from existing commissioned core responsibilities;

Option 3 (Preferred) – explore the potential for an existing specialist alcohol advice subcontractor within our commissioned substance misuse provider to be awarded this additional work as a grant funded opportunity to enable creation of additional staffing capacity to develop and deliver the workshops without impacting negatively upon existing service delivery.