Mental Health Emotional Wellbeing Services

This notice is to inform the market of the intention to directly award 12-month contracts to both Richmond Fellowship and Brighton Housing Trust, for the provision of Mental Health Emotional Wellbeing Services in the following Primary Care Networks: East Grinstead; Crawley Care Collaborative; South Crawley and; Horsham Central, for NHS West Sussex Clinical Commissioning Group ('the CCG') from 26th November 2021.

Emotional Wellbeing Services are Part of the NHS LTP for adult and older adults community transformation 2019-2024. Community mental health services are at the heart of the NHS Long Term Plan. The Mental Health Community Transformation Programme looks to achieve radical change in the design of community mental health care by moving towards joined up care and whole population approaches, establishing a revitalised purpose and identity for community MH services. The programme aims to transform community-based MH services at a neighbourhood level. PCNs have populations at neighbourhood level and these footprints are the foundation for the new ways of delivering care. The new integrated models of delivery will offer supportive and enabling interventions to people with a range of mental health needs from mild to moderate and severe, trauma related mental illness, and enduring mental health problems and dual diagnosis where alcohol or substance misuse is not the primary condition.

This is a long-term transformation programme, expected to be delivered incrementally over a three-year period from 2021/22 through to 2023/24. In 21/22, a key initial stage is to test the new model of care with a group of PCN "Accelerator" sites, sharing learning gained with a view to implement across all PCNs' by 23/24.

The intention is to expand this service across the 15 remaining West Sussex PCNs in 2022 and to increase the service capacity every year for the next 3 years, as directed by the National Long-Term Plan for adults and older adults in mental health. The proposal to directly award these contracts covers the first phase of the programme only. This direct award is being sought to meet urgent patient need for a service scheduled for April 2021, delayed due to Covid-19. The direct award will allow sufficient time to undertake a competitive procurement process to put in place a longer-term service for both the accelerator and non- accelerator PCNs.

Both Richmond Fellowship and Brighton Housing Trust as existing providers of mental health services, have an established relationship with the communities within these PCNs, and are therefore able to mobilise this service at speed. This direct award is made in the context of meeting patient need and delivering effective Mental health services in Primary care networks, reducing waiting times and supporting services users to maintain stability in their wellbeing and reducing the need for admission into acute beds and secondary services, while also signposting people to services necessary for their needs.

Additional information: Please note NHS England and Improvement have announced that the Sussex Health and Care Partnership, which is made up of all health and care organisations across East Sussex, West Sussex, and Brighton and Hove, has successfully met the criteria to become an Integrated Care System (ICS). An ICS is a way of working across health and care organisations that allows them to work closer together, to take collective responsibility of the health and wellbeing of populations across large areas.

It is not anticipated that the statutory responsibility or accountability of the individual health and care organisations working as an ICS will be affected, save for the expectation that CCG organisations will be abolished and functions transferred to the ICS. As a result of these intended healthcare reforms, the Contracting Authority(s) currently NHS East Sussex CCG/NHS West Sussex CCG/NHS Brighton and Hove CCG, may change during the life of the contract.