Provision of Mental Health Employment Service - for NEL Clinical Commissioning Group (NEL CCG) for Waltham Forest -PRJ 991

WEL CCGs (will merge into North East London to form the single entity NHS North East London CCG ("NEL CCG") on 1st April 2021). As the contracting Authority, the CCG wish to commission Mental Health Employment service to provide an individual placement and support (IPS) Employment Service to access and offer support to unemployed mental health service users with the aim of supporting them in work, education, or training within Waltham Forest. The service will be based predominately within the local Community Recovery Teams to provide (IPS) employment support to Service Users with Mental Health Conditions that are unemployed to move into paid work, training, education, or voluntary work.

Aims and Objectives. It is widely accepted that good employment is generally positive for a person's mental health, including those who have a mental health condition. Work supports and promotes social and economic inclusion and enables a person to be more independent and therefore have more control over their life, all of which have been identified as protective factors of mental wellbeing. For this reason, it is widely acknowledged among professionals that the longer people are absent from or out of work, the more likely they are to experience depression and/or anxiety. Therefore, the aim of this Mental Health employment service is to support people to gain appropriate employment. The objectives of the service are to: • Support people with mental health problems who want to work by providing education and training to develop job seeking skills and employability while supporting their job search and placement. • Develop skills and capability within employers, employment services, other settings such as voluntary organisations, colleges, and mental health services to better understand mental health and employment issues so they can more effectively support people with mental health problems. • Develop partnership working between public, private, and voluntary sector organisations to work together to support people with mental health problems, building whole system capacity. • Lead by example as an employer of people with lived experience of mental health problems.

The service will offer an open, flexible, and responsive range of opportunities to people who have mental health problems. A wide range of approaches and interventions will be offered by the successful organisation.

The employment service will deliver person-centred support to adults with mental health problems to gain paid employment. It is however, recognised that not all people with mental health problems will be successful in achieving this and in such cases the aim of the service will be to facilitate engagement with other vocational opportunities, such as training, education, and volunteering. Therefore, the overall aim is to increase the confidence, self-esteem, personal resilience, and life outcomes for people with mental health problems.

Additional information: The maximum contract term of 7 years (3yrs + 4yrs optional extensions), we anticipate that the maximum value over a 7-year contract period is (£1,655,570) exclusive of VAT. The CCG is seeking expressions of interest from suitably qualified and experienced mental health employment service providers who can provide demonstrable evidence of a record of accomplishment in delivering high quality and effective individual placement and support service.

Any expenditure, work or effort undertaken prior to contract award is accordingly a matter solely for the commercial judgment of potential service providers. In such circumstances, and in any event, the CCG or its advisors shall not be liable for any costs or loss of expenses whatsoever incurred by the respondent and company, agent, subsidiary, or organisation may have contributed to any response submitted to this notice. The ITT reference for this tender is PRJ991. All completed bids must be submitted by 17.00 on 18th March 2021. The Procurement process is facilitated entirely online via the stated e-procurement portal ProContract (the Portal). Interested Bidders must register on the portal and express an interest to access the ITT documentation via the link provided and submit an ITT response via the online questionnaires on the e-Tendering portal 'ProContract' before the submission deadline. See the procurement documentation for more details. The requirement's service specification has been published with this advertisement; the rest of the ITT documentation will be published week commencing 15th February 2021. The ITT can be found at https://procontract.due-north.com/Login. The services in the scope of this procurement 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 is instead governed by the "Light Touch Regime" contained within Chapter 3, Section 7 of the Regulations (Regulations 74 to 77). The CCG will adopt the Open procedure as a template for this procurement. The tendering process will be conducted in accordance with the requirements and flexibilities provided by Regulations 74 to 76 of the Regulations. The CCG will run a transparent tender process, treating all Bidders equally. For the avoidance of doubt, The CCG will not be bound by the Regulations or the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union or any other regulations or legislation except for the specific parts or circumstances that apply to the procurement of services such as this. Neither the inclusion of a Bidder selection stage, nor the use of any language or terms found in the Regulations, nor the description of the procedure voluntarily adopted by the CCG nor any other indication, shall be taken to mean that the CCG intends to hold itself bound by the Regulations, save those applicable to services coming within the scope of such as this.