C4 Navigate, refer and broker support
This is about helping clients, impartially, to find, choose, access and evaluate the support they need from others. It involves knowing the national, local and sector support available, referring clients well, and helping them specify, select, fund and evaluate providers, while making sure the client keeps responsibility for their own decisions. Over time it means building the client's ability to do this for themselves.
What you need to show
- C4.1
Identify the national, local and sector support relevant to the client's needs, including public programmes, finance, specialist advice and peer networks
- C4.2
Explain the options available to the client, including costs, eligibility and any public subsidy involved
- C4.3
Refer or introduce the client to appropriate services, explaining why, and with the client's consent to share their information
- C4.4
Help the client set out what they need and write a brief that will draw realistic, comparable proposals from providers
- C4.5
Help the client decide how they will choose between providers, judging fit, quality and value, and taking account of any rules attached to public funding
- C4.6
Help the client test providers' offers, including checking references and understanding what their quality marks and accreditations show
- C4.7
Help the client work out how to pay for the support they need, including where putting in their own money unlocks other help
- C4.8
Help the client and providers understand each other, explaining jargon in both directions
- C4.9
Stay impartial throughout, leaving the choice of provider, and how to use them, with the client
- C4.10
Follow up referrals and brokered support to check they have met the client's needs, and act on problems within your responsibility
- C4.11
Help the client become confident and capable of finding and judging support for themselves in future
- C4.12
Use feedback from clients and colleagues on providers to improve the quality of future referrals
- C4.13
Help the client and the providers they choose to establish a relationship of mutual trust
What you need to know and understand
- C4.K1
The current landscape of business support, including national services, local and regional provision, and sector, private and voluntary provision, and how to keep up to date with it
- C4.K2
The sources of finance and funding available for business support and business development
- C4.K3
Referral procedures and eligibility rules, and how to obtain and record consent to share client information
- C4.K4
How to write a good brief for providers
- C4.K5
How to compare providers' offers on cost, quality and fit
- C4.K6
The meaning of common quality standards and accreditations held by providers
- C4.K7
Procurement rules and the requirements for impartiality and independence where public funding is involved
- C4.K8
How to evaluate whether a provider's support has met the client's needs
- C4.K9
The records to keep of referrals and brokered support
Evolved from
Business Support 10 (Broker clients to business support services); Business Support 13 (Help the client to critically assess a business support service provider's offer); Business Support 14 (Broker deals with business support service providers); Business Support 15 (Help the client to build confidence and capacity to evaluate and broker their own solutions); Business Support 5 (in part); Business and Enterprise Support (2013) units 4 (in part), 14, 15 and 16.