Probation services

Tender description

The Ministry of Justice intends to tender intervention and rehabilitation services in England and Wales. These services form part of the probation services. The services to be procured are expected to comprise: — rehabilitative interventions, delivered as part of Rehabilitation Activity Requirements (RARs), — resettlement interventions, — provision of unpaid work (or community payback), and — accredited programmes. Enabling services and interventions to support offenders’ desistance will also be available to procure via the dynamic framework. This prior information notice has been issued for rehabilitative interventions and resettlement interventions. A separate notice has been issued for innovation partners to deliver accredited programmes and unpaid work and support the NPS to identify and deliver wider innovation. This PIN is being issued for market engagement purposes only. Any information provided is indicative only of the Authority’s current intentions and is subject to change. The Ministry of Justice intends to use a dynamic framework primarily to purchase the following services: 1) Rehabilitative interventions: Rehabilitative Interventions are delivered as part of a Rehabilitation Activity Requirement (RAR) of a Community Sentence and for Custodial Sentences from pre-release through post-release licence and Post Sentence Supervision (PSS). These are intended to support offenders and reduce re-offending by addressing a range of needs such as accommodation, education, relationships, etc. 2) Resettlement interventions: Resettlement activity starts 12 weeks before release, continues after release and aims to help offenders to resettle in the community after custody. Resettlement interventions aim at addressing the specific resettlement needs such as accommodation, education, relationships, etc. 3) Other desistance interventions: The dynamic framework will facilitate the purchase of enabling services and interventions for the Authority and other commissioning bodies. These services will be used to enhance the effectiveness of rehabilitative interventions delivered as part of the sentence and will provide additional support beyond those specified as part of an offender’s sentence. This will promote desistance and enable fair sentence delivery. The dynamic framework will operate as an open panel, which eligible suppliers can qualify to join, providing they meet the minimum criteria, at any point in time. No upper limit will be placed on the number of providers who can qualify. Suppliers will be required to qualify for lots, it is anticipated that lots will be based on offender needs and cohort. The dynamic framework will operate nationally, however, call off competitions will state geography for delivery; current thinking indicates that geographical scope will vary by competition and may range from Local Authority to region wide. Mini-competitions will be run to source specific rehabilitative and resettlement interventions. Mini-competitions are anticipated to range in value based on requirements, between 25 000 GBP and 1 000 000 GBP, and have a contract length between 1 and 4 years. Additionally, the Authority is considering offering grant agreements via the dynamic framework. Whilst the Ministry of Justice will be the main commissioner of services, other commissioning bodies may also use the dynamic framework. The procurement activity for the dynamic framework is expected to commence in late 2019 with the dynamic framework operational from the end of July 2020. The Authority will conduct a series of market engagement events between May and October 2019 to inform service and contract design, all interested suppliers are invited to attend. Details regarding initial events can be found below; additional events will be publicised in due course. If you would like to register to hear more about these events, please email ProbationDynamicFramework@justice.gov.uk Launch events (28th to 30th May). The launch events will outline: — our vision for probation services and what we want to achieve, — indicative procurement timelines. These will be joint events covering 2 procurements: 1) Accredited programmes and unpaid work; and 2) Rehabilitative and resettlement interventions. Dates have been scheduled for: — London: 28.5.2019 (10:30 — 13:00), — Cardiff: 29.5.2019 (10:30 — 13:00), — Manchester: 30.5.2019 (10:30 — 13:00). If you are unable to attend in person but would like to attend remotely, the launch event in London will be broadcast via webinar. Webinars: overview of services: Webinars, providing an overview of the services to be procured are scheduled for the week commencing the 3rd of June. We will repeat the same event twice. Please register for all launch events and webinars at the following link: http://probationlaunch.eventbrite.com