Tender Outcomes for Disability Employment Services
10 November 2014 at 10:12 am
The Abbott Government has announced that it has completed the competitive tender process of a $300 million per year program designed to help people with disability find jobs.
The Disability Management was announced in the Budget, with the Government saying it would put to open tender the 47 per cent of the program currently delivered by the Government provider, CRS Australia.
Disability Management Services is designed to provide specialist employment assistance to job seekers with temporary or permanent disability, injury or health condition and who do not require long-term ongoing support in the workplace.
Assistant Minister for Social Services, Senator Mitch Fifield, said 47 successful tenderers would receive 202 separate offers to deliver Disability Management Services (DMS) across 97 Employment Service Areas.
Fifield said it was the first time the entire disability employment market would be fully open to competition.
“Improving job opportunities for people with disability is a major priority for the Australian Government and I am pleased this comprehensive tender process has identified 47 quality providers who will do just that,” Fifield said.
“The successful tenderers are proven, high performing providers with a strong track record of helping people with a disability find and keep a job.”
“This was a very competitive process. A good pool of motivated non?government organisations with strong connections to employers submitted tenders.”
“This measure is all about giving job-seekers with disability confidence that their DES-DMS provider has demonstrated their ability to achieve high quality employment outcomes and that they therefore have the best chance possible of finding and keeping a job,” Senator Fifield said.
“Competition drives efficiency and innovation in service delivery, resulting in increased benefits and better employment outcomes for people with disability.”
“Full competition for DES-DMS tenders will enable more participants to receive quality support and sustainable employment outcomes by promoting high performance and continuous improvement in employment services providers."
Senator Fifield said the tender result was a good outcome for regional Australia, with more than half of the successful tenderers having their registered address located outside the capital cities.
He said there was also 14 new specialist services, including five services to assist people from a culturally and linguistically diverse background, and nine services to assist job-seekers who have a mental health condition.
The new contracts will take effect from March 2015 and will be offered until March 2018. All other DMS contracts, which were due to expire 30 June 2014, will be extended to March 2018.
19 of the successful tenderers will be new to the DMS market, bringing the total number of providers for this service to 73. There will also be an additional 265 DMS sites across Australia helping people with disability find and keep jobs, taking the total number of sites to 1,349.
Information about the successful DES-DMS tenderers can be found at the Department of Social Services website at https://www.dss.gov.au/DES/DMStender.
