Mental Health Community Navigators - Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly

This notice is placed as a Prior Information Notice and relates only to a pre-procurement market engagement exercise.

As part of Community Mental Health Transformation, Cornwall Partnership Trust (CFT) are seeking to commission a minimum of 15 whole time equivalent (WTE) mental health community navigators. It is expected that there will be a minimum of one WTE per Primary Care Network (PCN) across the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly integrated care system.

Mental health community navigators will work alongside clinicians at the initial point of contact in mental health services. They will offer advice, guidance and support for clients, enabling them to access appropriate services within their local communities and support them to manage their condition using recovery focused tools and interventions. All support offered to users will be tailored to their individual needs and be place based, (i.e. in the context of Integrated Care Systems, aligned to local authorities and patient flows of acute and primary care).

The aim is to develop the mental health community navigator role for people with mental health needs, including those with a severe mental illness, who can often be marginalised and feel excluded and detached from the community in which they live.

The navigators will:

• Be part of a core Primary Care MDT (Multi-Disciplinary Team), working with other professionals and representatives from other agencies to agree the best approach for complex patients. • Offer early, holistic support for people with SMI (Severe Mental Illness), by using an asset-based approach with a role for all sections of the community, not just primary and secondary care services. • Contribute to removal of traditional barriers, for example between primary and secondary care, social care/ health care/ housing services, and health care. • Support people to access care closer to home. • Navigate and signpost individuals to employment & vocation, housing, substance, self-harm support as well as to other community assets. • Work closely with PCN mental health practitioners to support movement towards personal goals or access to other services, with a recovery focus. This may include motivational interviewing, solution focused approaches, emotion regulation, psychoeducation. • Facilitate equity of access for all of our populations, with a particular focus on 18-25year olds and older adults. • Contribute to improved access to physical health checks and interventions. • Offer and support individuals aged 18+ to access opportunities for rehabilitation, social, education, leisure, employment, community skills and recovery programmes.

The Commissioner will be holding a market engagement/briefing event in late April 2023.

Additional information: The contract is likely to commence in August 2023 and be for an initial term of 1 year, with a further two extension options of 1 year + 1 year. The maximum annual contract value is anticipated to be in the region of £700,000. It is anticipated that a procurement exercise will be undertaken, with the opportunity likely to be advertised in May 2023.

A market briefing event will be held virtually over MS Teams W/C 24th April 2023. Further details and confirmation of the date will be given to those who register and express an interest.

To register your interest in attending the event, please complete the attached Market Engagement Questionnaire and return via the eProcurement system, Atamis.

Interested providers will be able to view this opportunity via the live opportunities list on the 'Health Family' e-procurement system, Atamis. Click on 'View our Live Opportunities' from the home page, available on the following link: https://health-family.force.com/s/Welcome.

Once you have found the opportunity (via the search function, using the title or reference number); to gain full access to the market engagement questionnaire you will need to click on 'Register interest' - this will take you to the log-in page.

If you are not already registered on the system, you will need to do so before gaining full access and to be able to submit your market engagement questionnaire. Please return the questionnaire using the correspondence function within Atamis.

This notice is an information gathering exercise rather than a call for competition in its own right, and therefore publication or response does not commit commissioners or respondents to a future procurement, nor provide any process exemptions or preferential treatment to any parties expressing an interest.

Commissioners will not be liable for costs incurred by any interested party in participating in this exercise. Interested parties should note that a response to this notice does not guarantee an automatic invitation to any subsequent formal procurement, which the commissioners will consider in due course.

The services are healthcare services falling within Schedule 3 to the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 ("the Regulations") which are not subject to the full regime of the Regulations, but are instead governed by the "Light Touch Regime" contained within Chapter 3, Section 7 of the Regulations (Regulations 74 to 77).

This exercise is being carried out by NHS South, Central and West Commissioning Support Unit (SCW) on behalf of the Commissioner.