Health services

Tender description

Hertfordshire County Council (the “Council”) is carrying out Pre-Procurement Market Engagement (“PPME”) in relation to an integrated therapies offer for children and young people aged 0-18, to include speech and language therapy provision, and occupational therapy provision. The council will consider the feedback received to help inform the council’s options and further decision making. For the avoidance of doubt, this stage of the project is not part of a formal procurement process and the council is not committing, at this stage, to carrying out such a process. Participation or non-participation in the PPME shall not prevent any supplier participating in a potential future procurement, nor is it intended that any information supplied as part of the PPME shall place any supplier at an advantage in a potential procurement process. Participation in the PPME will be at each organisation’s own cost. No expense in responding to this PPME will be reimbursed by the council. Hertfordshire’s children’s services commissioning agencies share a long standing commitment to developing an integrated therapies offer for children and young people. This commitment was included in the integrated commissioning strategy published in 2015. The commissioning agencies involved are Hertfordshire County Council, East and North Hertfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group, and Herts Valleys Clinical Commissioning Group. This offer will include speech and language therapy, and occupational therapy. The offer will be integrated across health, education, and social care. This means that there will be one contract for these 2 therapies across Hertfordshire’s send system. The integrated offer is meant to build on recognised best practice. This includes a tiered approach to therapies provision, which emphasises universal provision which prevents needs from escalating. At the universal level the focus will be on the provider working alongside partner agencies to upskill the workforce around disabled children. Hertfordshire’s long-term vision for an integrated offer is to develop a locality based model, in which multi-disciplinary teams (MDTs) utilise a key-worker approach, so that families have a single-point of contact. The skills mix within MDTs will encourage professionals to share expertise, and develop an integrated practice; the therapeutic assessment process should be holistic and person-centred. Specialist knowledge will be targeted at cases where it can achieve the biggest impact. Universal interventions will be delivered flexibly. It is proposed that this long-term vision will be realised over a 3 years period.