The deadline has been extended to 18 December 2026. Fife Council and FVA announced the extension on 13 October 2026.

The Reference Group will look again at the overall timescale and the submission deadlines at its next meeting. If anything changes we will update this page straight away and e-mail the Children's Services Forum mailing list.

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18 December 2026. Packs that give the closing date as 5pm on Monday 2 November 2026 are out of date: they were prepared before the extension was agreed. The Council has confirmed that any pack sent out with that date in October was sent in error.

If you have a pack showing 2 November, you do not need to do anything except work to the new deadline.

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Fife Council has committed that the total funding available for commissioning from April 2027 will be no less than £4.251 million.

The amount attached to each brief is part of the review of the briefs, so individual allocations may change. We will publish any change here.

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Yes. At the meeting with senior elected members and officers on 15 October 2026 it was agreed that there will be further consideration of the savings being sought, the assumptions behind them, and how they might best be achieved, taking account of the possible impact on services and the people who rely on them.

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Possibly. Additional funding may become available in December, linked to the Whole Family Support System Change Programme, which is due to launch in April 2027.

This is not yet confirmed. We will say here as soon as we know more.

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Yes. You may apply for less than the total funding available within a brief, as long as you can show that the service you propose can deliver the required outcomes effectively for the amount you ask for.

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They are all being reviewed: their scope, wording and expectations, and the funding attached to each one, to make sure they are appropriate, realistic and clearly expressed. FVA is directly involved in the review, and the Reference Group will go through each brief at its next meeting.

If a brief changes, we will publish the change here and e-mail the forum's mailing list, so that nobody is working to an out-of-date version.

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The Council's guidance is that if you cannot meet the full requirements of a brief on your own, you should talk to other services about a partnership that would deliver the full specification. Formal partnership agreements may not be in place within the timescale, so your application should explain the partnership discussions you have had, what each partner would contribute, and why you propose to deliver the service that way. Send one application on behalf of the partnership.

On 15 October 2026 the Council also committed to exploring how more flexibility can be built in, so that an organisation is not necessarily prevented from applying just because it cannot meet every element of a brief. We will update this answer when that has been worked through.

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Yes. Please send only one application, and set out clearly the role of each partner in it.

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You are asked to say whether you used AI to prepare your application and, if you did, to describe briefly how. That might include using it to help with drafting, editing, proof-reading, summarising information or formatting your answers.

The question is there for transparency, so that the Council understands how applications were prepared. Using AI will not affect how your application is scored or assessed.

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No, you don’t have to submit a video. You are expected to showcase a child, young person or family’s journey through the proposed service using a platform of choice as part of your application. This approach is designed to be fair and flexible, allowing organisations to showcase what they can do in a way that feels most comfortable to them.

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The decision-making process, and how applications will be assessed, are on the agenda for the next meeting of the Reference Group. We will publish what is agreed on this page.

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The commissioning Reference Group is how the sector is involved in shaping the commissioning arrangements. Its existing members stay on it, and James Ross, the Council's Head of Service for Children and Families and Justice Social Work and its Chief Social Work Officer, and Kenny Murphy, FVA's Chief Executive, are joining it.

The Group will look at the timescale and deadlines, each of the briefs, the funding attached to them, and how decisions will be made. We will publish an update after every meeting.

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The scoring panel will include representatives from the local authority social work and contracts team, FVA and lived experience groups. The scoring framework will be developed and agreed by this scoring group. The process for decision making and scoring will be discussed at the Reference Group, and we will publish what has been agreed on this page.

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The questions and responses on page 3 – 8 of the application form will be shared with the lived experience panel to help them provide feedback on the applications. The information on pages 1, 2 and 9 will not be shared.

The organisations will be identifiable to panel members, but they have been supported in advance to objectively consider the content of the briefs and ensure that feedback is balanced and fair, and not influenced by any individual experience of a service or organisation.

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FVA does, working closely with Fife Council so that the information is accurate and consistent. Where the Council has given its own answer to a question, we use its wording.

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No. Your name, your organisation and your contact details are seen only by FVA staff, and we never pass them to Fife Council or anybody else.

We pass on the question itself, reworded where necessary so that it cannot identify you, and publish the answer here. We may also contact you if we need to understand your question better.

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We update this page at least once a fortnight. Every time it changes we e-mail everyone on the Children's Services Forum mailing list, saying what is new.

To join the list, e-mail Mark Hutchison, FVA's Children's Services Development Manager, at [email protected].

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FVA will shortly send a brief survey to everyone on the Children's Services Forum mailing list, asking about your concerns, any difficulties you foresee with the proposed arrangements, and your ideas for improving the commissioning process. We will publish the results once it closes.

You can also ask a question here at any time, come to the Children's Services Forum's meetings, or contact FVA directly - we are here to support individual organisations through the process.

Organisations can also speak to their Link Officer or the commissioning team for more general enquiries about developing proposals.

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