1. That the Occupational Therapy service to support education, learning and training for children and young people in Surrey be jointly commissioned by Surrey County Council and Surrey’s six Clinical Commissioning Groups from April 2017.
2. That the procurement of the Council funded Occupational Therapy service forms part of the Community Health Services procurement process, as agreed at 24 November 2015 Cabinet meeting for Health Visiting and School Nursing, Parent Infant Mental Health and CAMHS Community Nurses.
3. That in the light of the addition of Occupational Therapy to the Community Health Services procurement process, that the delegation of decision-making be extended to the Strategic Director of Children, Schools and Families.
4. That the Strategic Director for Adult Social Care and Public Health, the Cabinet Member for Wellbeing and Health and the Head of Procurement will represent this service area at the Committee in Common (this enables all organisations involved in the procurement process to make joint decisions).
Reasons for Decisions:
A review by the College of Occupational Therapists (2015) recommended joint commissioning of this service.
A single provider for all children’s community health services will facilitate easier access for users and provide benefits around information sharing and reducing on-costs (e.g. management and premises) and clear co-ordination of health care provision.
The occupational therapy workforce is small and can have difficulties in recruitment and retention that would be exacerbated by separate procurements.
The planning of the community health services procurement has already started; with governance and funding frameworks that are unlikely to pose any additional costs to Surrey County Council.
A single tender process would benefit both commissioners and potential providers.
Integrated community health service provision will facilitate better and seamless multi-health professional work; particularly for differential diagnostics, assessments of complex needs and intervention for children with disabilities.
[The decisions on this item can be called in by either the Council Overview Board or the Education and Skills Scrutiny Board]