Health services

Tender description

The Children’s Integrated Therapy service will operate as a single combined therapy service including all therapies — speech and language, occupational therapy and physiotherapy and the prescribing of children’s equipment and orthotic requirements for children on the caseload. The service will provide therapy and equipment for children and young people up to their 19th birthday (0-18 years service), who are registered with an East Sussex GP. The Children’s Integrated Therapy service will operate as a single combined therapy service including all therapies — speech and language, occupational therapy and physiotherapy and the prescribing of children’s equipment and orthotic requirements for children on the caseload. The CITES service model will be offered through a team approach, each team being of a number of therapists and therapy assistants (across all 3 disciplines), and administrative support, who will work with children across the whole age range providing therapy services to meet the needs of children within their defined locality. Therapy services will be delivered to children and young people aged 0-19 years across East Sussex, supporting children with complex disability, neurodevelopmental, and musculoskeletal conditions. The provider is expected to ensure that services are offered in a range of venues, i.e. clinics shall be situated to give equity and ease of access to all within the boundaries of each of the commissioner localities. The provider may use the children’s centres available as well as health centres, schools and other community venues as appropriate subject to providers approaching those organisations directly. Each child should have a named therapist appointed to their case. Individual therapists will use their professional judgement as to the appropriate pathway for each child and will liaise with parents and the early years setting/school/Children’s Services Department staff accordingly. The primary period of the contract will be 3 years from commencement of the service with a single option of extending the term for a maximum period of up to a further 24 months. Contract extensions will be at the sole discretion of the contracting authority. This service requirement falls within the Particular Procurement Regime (social and other specific services) as per Chapter 3 Section 7 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 will apply to this procurement process (former Part B services). The 2015 regulations are referred to as “the Regulations”. Neither the publication of the advertisement, the inclusion of a bidder selection stage nor the use of the term “Pre-Qualification Questionnaire" nor any other indication shall be taken to mean that the contracting authority intends to hold itself bound by the full force of the regulations (save those applicable to the Particular Procurement Regime (also known as “light touch regime”). The contract to be entered into by the contracting authority and the selected provider will be based on the current version at the time of signature of NHS Standard Contract and the provider of the service will be required to fully understand and comply with the terms & conditions and associated particulars. The NHS Standard Contract can be accessed here: http://www.england.nhs.uk/nhs-standard-contract/