Primary Care Based Mental Health Services including IAPT in East Sussex 21.794 (PINWCC)

Descriptions

This notice is to inform the market of the intention to directly award a 24-month contract to Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust for the provision of Primary Care Based Mental Health Services including IAPT in East Sussex for NHS East Sussex Clinical Commissioning Group ('the CCG') commencing 1st April 2022., East Sussex Primary Care Based Mental Health Services as known as Health in Mind (HiM) consist of two core and integrated components. The first of which is the provision of Primary Care Mental Health Workers (PCMHW)., PCMHW are qualified mental health professionals that provide support to all GP practices in East Sussex. Their role is to support practices to manage patient care and enable timely directed access to appropriate mental health clinical, recovery and support services., This includes advising on and assessment of referrals to the second component of the service the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT), programme., The IAPT programme is a long standing nationally mandated programme for the treatment of adult anxiety disorders and depression. The national expectation as set out in the NHS Long Term Plan is that the number of people with anxiety disorders or depression who can access talking therapies through IAPT increase by an additional 380,000 per year to reach 1.9 million by 2023/24. IAPT services are characterised by three things, evidenced-based psychological therapies, routine outcome monitoring and regular outcomes focused supervision of staff providing the service. , The provision of Primary Care Based Mental Health Services (to be referred to going forward as HiM), including IAPT are a nationally mandated duty for CCGs to provide., The intention is to directly award this contract to Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (the incumbent provider) for the following reasons., The transformation and expansion of Community Mental Health Services are set out in the NHS Long Term Plan. A key tenet of which is the nationally mandated development of Emotional Wellbeing Services (EWS). These services are integrated teams providing clinical and wellbeing support and serving PCN populations in primary care / outside of specialist Secondary Care mental health services. They are the next incarnation of the existing HiM programme. Continuation of existing East Sussex HiM services and enabling their transition into the new national EWS framework, is key to maintaining current system stability and achievement of the nationally mandated Community Mental Health Transformation agenda., The EWS programme is a key strand in the national vision for the future of Community Mental Health Services which is to be brought about through a process of transformational change taking place over the next three years, of which East Sussex are currently coming to an end of the first year. The complexity of both the design aspects of proposed changes and the multiplicity of partners on which their success depends, would indicate that a change of a core stakeholder at this time would risk destabilisation of the East Sussex Mental Health Transformation programme and associated ICS system wide interdependencies. , Entering a competitive procurement process for primary care based mental health services at this current point in time presents significant risk to system stability and achievement of overall transformation objectives. , The EWS programme is a key strand in the national vision for the future of Community Mental Health Services which is to be brought about through a process of transformational change taking place over the next three years, of which East Sussex are currently coming to an end of the first year. Alignment with nationally mandated expectations sees East Sussex CCG at an advanced stage in the initial implementation of these commitments. The transition from the existing primary care based mental health delivery framework i.e., HiM to the new nationally mandated EWS once completed, will also enable Commissioners to understand better and accurately specify the new EWS framework to facilitate consideration of future opportunities for provision of its functions as the Transformation Programme completes its journey. , It is these key reasons that underpin East Sussex CCG's decision in respect of its intention to make a Direct Award for a two-year period to the Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust., This direct award proposal is made in the context of meeting patient need and maintaining service quality and safety at a time of significant nationally mandated system transformation. HiM and IAPT are the principal means of mental health primary care integration and via which local populations' prevalence of common mental health problems such as anxiety and depression are treated. They underpin the delivery of the current and proposed Primary and Secondary Care Mental Health Service delivery arrangements in East Sussex CCG and as such their continuation via a Direct Award for a two-year period is considered the best approach to ensure patient safety, service quality and nationally mandated service transformation requirements are met., The value stated represents the total for the whole 2 years of the contract., If any potential bidder wishes to discuss the commissioning intentions outlined within the published documentation, please raise this via the Intend eTendering Portal in the first instance within 14 days of the date of the publication of this Prior Information Notice.