GB-London: Southwark Talking Therapies Service

Tender description

Improving Access to Psychological Therapies Programme (IAPT) is a national programme that aims to relieve distress and transform lives by offering NICE-approved interventions and treatment choice to people with Common Mental Disorders (CMD) for example depression and anxiety disorders NHS Southwark Clinical Commissioning Group SCCG is committed to ensuring that the people of Southwark have access to evidence-based talking therapies in the borough and plans to recommission the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) service that has been in operation since 2008 and practice based counselling services that have been in place for over 15 years. The new Talking Therapy Service will be commissioned on the basis of a stepped care model articulated by the relevant NICE Guidelines and by the Improving Access to Psychological Therapy Programme. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recommends a range of psychological therapies to treat people with common mental disorders and bring them to recovery. It also recommends these therapies are used to provide a system of stepped care, shown in the diagram . Stepped care has two principles: •treatment should always have the best chance of delivering positive outcomes while burdening the patient as little as possible, and •a system of scheduled review to detect and act on non-improvement must be in place to enable stepping up to more intensive treatments, stepping down where a less intensive treatment becomes appropriate and stepping out when an alternative treatment or no treatment become appropriate. NHS Southwark will be using a Prime Contractor model approach for the procurement of Talking Therapies Service (Improving Access to Psychological Therapies including Counselling). A brief summary of the Prime Contractor Model is given below. A single Relevant Organisation (the Prime Contractor) is responsible for managing an entire care pathway and enters into subcontracts with other relevant organisation for parts of the care pathway. The Prime Contractor need not be the largest Relevant Organisation or the main provider of the services, but the role is focused on the management of the care pathway. NHS Southwark CCG would encourage Prime Contractors to work with voluntary sector organisations as part of this tender process.