Health and Social Care - Early Engagement - Freedom to Speak Up Helpline

Early engagement notice for the development of a 'Freedom to Speak Up' Helpline service.

This notice is intended to provide interested organisations with the opportunity to gain an understanding of a potential Department of Health (DH) requirement.

The DH may ultimately seek tenders for the provision of a service that provides guidance and signposting support to people who may wish to speak up about issues that may or do affect patient safety or quality of care.

The objective of the requirement would be to help ensure that staff working in health and social care feel empowered to raise concerns and that employers have access to guidance to help deal with those concerns effectively to improve patient or resident safety.

The 'Freedom to Speak Up Helpline' should be a mechanism that is independent from formal employment chains.

- The procurement requirement would be for the provision of unbiased, independent, confidential free guidance for health and social care staff. Currently this is provided via a telephone helpline and an email service.

- The service currently gives general guidance and signposts people that may wish to speak up to resources that may help them. It also provides support to employers.

- The service would not give specific advice on individual cases or act on individual concerns.

- The successful organisation would also be responsible for maintaining a website related to the helpline, and potentially for other associated services.

It will be a fundamental part of the requirement that the appointed organisation can demonstrate independence and impartiality in relation to providers of health care, social care, the Department of Health and the National Health Service. It is also a requirement that the supplier seeks to constantly improve its service by acting on feedback from people that use the service.

In addition, because the law around whistleblowing and what constitutes a 'protected disclosure' is complex, the requirement would be that staff providing the service have access to appropriate and current legal guidance in this subject area.

A supplier engagement day will be held with interested organisations. Details of how to attend the day are provided in the section 5. additional text section.

Additional information: Early Engagement Day. The purpose of this stage is to advertise the potential requirement and seek early engagement from suppliers operating in the market. The purpose of the early engagement day will be to engage with service providers to provide an opportunity to;

1. Obtain a clear understanding of what business outcomes DH requires and ask questions regarding the proposed scope of work;

2. Obtain market views on how to structure the requirement to enable DH to maximise market interest, innovation and value for money.

3. DH welcomes innovative proposals; if an alternative delivery method for fulfilling the requirement is possible, then the DH is open to consider these proposals at the pre tender stage. There is already a helpline in place, the DH wish to take this opportunity to refresh its approach.

The Department of Health (DH) intends to hold a supplier engagement event on Wednesday 21 December 2016 in Leeds.

This will involve a two-way group discussion including presentations and Q&A sessions before individual briefings are held on a one to one basis via telephone conference calls (where suppliers are unable to attend) or face to face meetings.

All interested organisations should register their interest in attending the briefing by emailing: [email protected] no later than Monday 19th December 2016, providing;

1. company and contact details of the person(s) wishing to attend, 2. a single paragraph summary of your organisation's experience including whether you are a Small to Medium Enterprise (SME).

Notes of the day including all questions and answers will be made available for those who are unable to attend or dial into a briefing.

This notice is for information only and the DH reserves the right to discontinue the proposed tendering process and not to award the contract. The information contained in this notice, including information relating to the nature and scope of the DH's requirements, the service classification of this requirement or the list of CPV codes is only indicative of DH's current thinking and is neither exhaustive nor binding and DH reserves the right at its absolute discretion to amend it at the time of issue of any further notices or at any other time.

The publication of this notice in no way obliges DH to commence with any competitive tender process. The DH is not and shall not be liable for any costs incurred by those expressing any interest in participating in the market consultation exercise advertised in this notice.

Potential suppliers should note that, in accordance with Government policies on transparency, DH intends to publish the invitation to tender (ITT) documents, and the text of any contract awarded, subject to redactions at the discretion of DH.

Further information on transparency can be found at http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/content/transparencyoverview