Issue - meetings

This report seeks approval from Cabinet to award five contracts for the provision of Community Connections Services in Surrey to commence on 1 April 2017 as the current arrangements end on 31 March 2017.

These contracts will enable Surrey County Council to fulfil its statutory duties under the Care Act 2014 to prevent, reduce and delay the care and support needs of those with mental health needs. The Care Act gave Surrey County Council new duties to promote wellbeing. Adult Social Care and the Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) in Surrey have worked together to maximise the opportunities to ensure the outcomes of people with mental health needs are met in the most cost effective way. By recommending the contract awards for the provision of these co-produced, evidence based and robustly evaluated mental health services, the County Council will effectively demonstrate its support for parity of esteem for mental health and improve the mental wellbeing of Surrey citizens.

Mental health services are significantly underfunded compared with physical health services. By commissioning these services, we will ultimately decrease the demand on and cost of the more complex mental health services. This is described in more detail from paragraph 15 and 16 of this report.

• Surrey Community Connections services are open access services, delivered by the voluntary sector, to support people (aged 16 and over) with mental health needs to stay well in their communities. Surrey County Council provides leadership for these jointly commissioned services, working with all the Clinical Commissioning Groups in Surrey. The services promote social inclusion, community participation, mental well-being and recovery by connecting people to ‘mainstream’ activities in their community by offering a variety of group activity and one to one support. At the end of 2015/16, Community Connections services were supporting over 4,500 people in Surrey. The contribution from adult social care was £680,669 for that financial year.

The outcomes delivered by Community Connections services include:

·         Enabling an individual’s recovery

·         Helping people develop and maintain a support network

·         Giving people personalised support to fit their needs.

This report provides details of the procurement process, including the results of the tender evaluation, engagement and consultation. Parts 1 and 2 of this report demonstrate why the recommended contract awards deliver best value for money and contribute to the strategic goals of Wellbeing and Resident Experience.

Due to the commercial sensitivity involved in the contract award process, the detailed evaluation report and financial details of successful providers have been circulated as a Part 2 report (item 14).

[The decision on this item may be called in by either the Council Overview Board or the Social Care Services Scrutiny Board]

RESOLVED:

1.    The background information set out in the submitted report be noted.

2.    The award of five localised contracts for three years from 1 April 2017, with an option to extend for two periods of one year each for Community Connections services in Surrey be approved.

Reasons for Decisions:

The current agreements will expire on 31 March 2017. A full tender process, in compliance with the requirements of Public Contract Regulations and Procurement Standing Orders, has been completed and the recommendations provide best value for money for the Council following a thorough evaluation process.

Community Connections services will be delivered in Surrey from local bases. The recommended providers have committed to be proactive in providing apprenticeships and volunteering opportunities to Surrey residents whilst delivering efficiencies for the Council.

[The decision on this item may be called in by either the Council Overview Board or the Social Care Services Scrutiny Board]

The Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care, Wellbeing and Independence introduced this report which sought approval to award five contracts for the provision of Community Connections Services in Surrey to commence on 1 April 2017 as the current arrangements end on 31 March 2017.

These contracts will enable Surrey County Council to fulfil its statutory duties under the Care Act 2014 to prevent, reduce and delay the care and support needs of those with mental health needs. Mental health services are significantly underfunded compared with physical health services. By commissioning these services, we will ultimately decrease the demand on, and cost of, the more complex mental health services.  The Cabinet Member explained that there were 4,500 service users and that under the current contract the average cost per user was £118 as opposed to a typical cost of £11,300 for an acute psychiatric in-patient admission.

The report provided details of the procurement process, including the results of the tender evaluation, engagement and consultation. Parts 1 and 2 of this report demonstrate why the recommended contract awards deliver best value for money and contribute to the strategic goals of Wellbeing and Resident Experience.

Due to the commercial sensitivity involved in the contract award process, the detailed evaluation report and financial details of successful providers have been circulated as a Part 2 report.

RESOLVED:

1.    That the background information set out in this report be noted.

2.            That the award of five localised contracts for three years from 1 April 2017, with an option to extend for two periods of one year each for Community Connections services in Surrey was approved. (Details of the awards and the contract values are in the Part 2 report.)