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Summary, notice description and lot information
The NHS Suffolk and North East Essex Integrated Care Board is seeking to deliver a specialised counselling service for pregnancy-related bereavement and baby loss. The service will be available in Suffolk and north east Essex, targeting health services as the main procurement category. Officially awarded on 25th April 2025, the contract period is slated to run from 1st October 2025 until 31st September 2028, with no option to extend.
The direct award process was employed, under the Health Care Services (Provider Selection Regime) Regulations 2023, reflecting an award procedure without prior publication of a call for competition. This contract aims to serve women, birthing persons, and their partners experiencing mild to moderate mental health distress, with services accessible through both professional and self-referral. This tender presents significant opportunities for businesses in the health and counselling sectors, particularly those with expertise in perinatal mental health and bereavement support services.
The successful bidder, Petals - The Baby Loss Counselling Charity, exemplifies how SMEs can contribute valuable services within the integrated care system. The requirements entail providing flexible counselling sessions with parent choice in delivery mode, which could encourage innovations in virtual and face-to-face mental health services. Businesses capable of offering specialised support in this sensitive area can explore further collaboration possibilities as the contract progresses, potentially expanding services within the prescribed framework.
This contract focuses on quality over cost, indicating the importance placed on service effectiveness and safety in delivering mental health support.
The counselling service focusses on supporting women, birthing people and their partners who are experiencing mild to moderate mental health distress following a stillbirth, second trimester miscarriage, termination for medical reasons, recurrent miscarriages, neonatal loss, birth trauma, pregnancy after loss or early miscarriage (accessed only via professional referral). Access will be by professional referral or self-referral basis. The delivery model will involve a triage session followed (if required) by a fixed number of counselling sessions. Patient outcomes will be captured using Core10 as an assessment method, with a minimum key performance benchmark of 50% for Reliable Improvement. By providing support for mild to moderate mental following pregnancy-related loss support, this specialist service will become embedded in the commissioned perinatal mental health pathway within the integrated care system. Contract period will be 01/10/2025 to 31/09/2028, there will be no option to extend the contract. NHS Suffolk and North East Essex Integrated Care Board are awarding the contract named within this notice under the Direct Award C process which is outlined within the Health Care Services (Provider Selection Regime) Regulations 2023. The provider named in this notice is an existing provider and has been reviewed through a Key Criteria assessment to ensure the awarding body is satisfied with current performance and reasonably expects the provider to be able to satisfy the contract which is the subject of this notice. The contract which is the subject of this notice has not changed considerably when compared with the existing / previous contract delivered by the named provider. The ICB may wish to introduce additional services during the lifetime of the contract ("Contract modifications"). Such contract modifications will be contemplated where additional requirements are similar and or complementary to the services already included in the Specification, at any given time. Such expansion would be by the addition of services commissioned by the Authority as named in the Contract Notice. To this end, after the award of contract, there is a possibility that the contract may be varied as allowable in accordance with the Health Care Services (Provider Selection Regime) Regulations 2023.
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The Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS) is a framework designed to increase transparency and access to public procurement data in the public sector.
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