Individual Placement Service Programme

NHS Midlands and Lancashire CSU is working on behalf of NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB, this invitation to tender is for an Individual Placement and Support (IPS) Programme.

Individual Placement and Support (IPS) is an evidence- based model of employment support. Supporting people with severe mental health difficulties to find and keep competitive employment. It involves intensive, individual support, a rapid job search followed by placement in paid employment, and time-unlimited in-work support for both the employee and the employer.

The Lancashire and South Cumbria IPS service currently offers support to any Lancashire and South Cumbria service users aged between 16 and 69 years of age, referred via Early Intervention in Psychosis or Community Mental Health Teams or service users within either of these services who choose to self-refer into the IPS service.

The service operates within the 8 key principles of IPS and a fidelity review of the service is carried out by IPS Grow to ensure the quality of the service and demonstrates the commitment to continuous quality improvement. The contract will require the provider to work with the ICB to further expand the service to other mental health services available to individuals with a severe mental illness including primary care, increasing the number of individuals supported to secure employment inline with the NHS Long Term Plan requirements as stipulated in the service specification.

The provider will demonstrate the increase in activity by provided regular reports to commissioners and demonstrating the number of service users becoming actively engaged in the service and number of service users starting paid employment as well as other standards required by the commissioners.

The ITT will be live on Wednesday 28th December 2022 on the MLCSU Bravo portal (see below) & it will have a deadline for submissions of 12:00 midday on Wednesday 25th January 2023 Contract Period The initial contract will be for 3 years with a 2 years optional extension. The contract start date will be 1st May 2023. Contract Value The Financial Envelope is for a total of £4,550,000 over the 5 years (split equally over the contract period of 5 years). The ICB has set an affordability threshold for the Procurement and reserves the right not to consider Bids that are unaffordable and above the affordability envelope of the project, or in in absence of an affordability envelope, the Find a Tender Service (FTS) notice value. The ICB may seek clarification on bids that are unusually low or above the affordability threshold. Following clarification, it will reserve the right not to consider Bids that are either above the affordability threshold or unusually low.

Additional information:

Interested providers are advised to register with MLCSU e-Procurement portal Bravo via the following link: https://mlcsu.bravosolution.co.uk

This contract is for clinical services which are light touch regime services for the purpose of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 as specified in Schedule 3 of the Regulations (Regulations). Accordingly, the contracting authority is only bound by those parts of the Regulations detailed in Chapter 3 Particular Procurement Regimes

Section 7. The contracting authority is not voluntarily following any other part of the regulations.

Right to Cancel: The Contracting Authority reserves the right to discontinue the process at any time, which shall include the right not to award a contract or contracts.

The Contracting Authority shall not be liable for any costs or expenses incurred by any candidate or tenderer in connection with the completion and return of the information requested in this notice, or in the completion or submission of any tender, irrespective of the outcome of the competition or if the competition is cancelled or postponed.

All dates, time periods and values specified in this notice are provisional and the Contracting Authority reserves the right to change these.

Transparency: The Contracting Authority is subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR) and may be required to disclose information received in the course of this procurement under FOIA or the EIR. In addition, and in accordance with the UK Government's policies on transparency, the contracting authority intends to publish procurement documentation and the text of any resulting contractual arrangements, subject to possible redactions at the discretion of the Contracting Authority. Any redactions, whether in relation to information requests under FOIA, the EIR or policies on transparency will be in accordance with those grounds prescribed under the Freedom of Information Act. If and when this requirement is offered to tender, this will be done via electronic means using the internet.