Medway Young Persons' Substance Misuse Support and Recovery Service

Medway Council require an effective and equitable service that supports young people who use substances to access a range of support services (such as harm reduction interventions, one-to-one support, group support, recovery, and education) to meet their needs effectively, preventing further substance-related harms.

Medway Council carried out a health assessment at the start of this year which identified gaps in service provision between CYP and adult’s services. This has informed Medway Council’s long-term aim to create an all-age system for substance misuse services and improve transitions between the CYP service and the adult’s service. At present the Young People’s service and the adults treatment service are delivered by two separate providers, commissioned by different organisations. While both commissioners and providers work collaboratively, the current arrangement has different contract end dates and contract management routines. This award is the first step in aligning the contracts, their management, and personnel while a new all age, but age appropriate, model and service specification are developed. The benefits are as follows:

• Commissioner can focus on service development and stakeholder engagement rather than performance managing two contracts
• Pooling of resources will increase the amount available to use on service delivery
• Co-design of the new all age service will be more effective and a wider pool of service users available for consultation

To enable this, the proposal is for the CYP service to run alongside the existing adults’ service and provided by the current adults’ service provider. Therefore, the contract term will be brought in-line with the adult’s contract, with an initial contract period of 19 months (1 Sept 2024 – 31 March 2026), followed by one optional 12-month extension.

This is a Provider Selection Regime (PSR) intended approach notice. The awarding of this contract is subject to the Health Care Services (Provider Selection Regime) Regulations 2023. For the avoidance of doubt, the provisions of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 do not apply to this award.

The award decision makers are Public Health commissioning officers.

The intention is to award the CYP Substance Misuse Service using the Most Suitable Provider process.