Invitation to tender for the provision of Increasing access for Psychological therapy

Health Education England (HEE) wishes to commission a range of education to provide the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) workforce in the Midlands region.

The education will be developed taking account of the strategic priorities identified in:

• Service Commissioners' emerging service priorities.

• The NHS Long Term Plan.

• National guidance and emerging national and professional frameworks (Section 2).

• Service providers' current and emerging priorities.

The education provider will take account of the development needs of the existing IAPT workforce as well as those of the future workforce.

For the purposes of this tender HEE has identified Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner training (the PWP Programme), described in Section 3 of this document, for which tenderers will have the opportunity to bid.

HEE-M wishes to ensure local accessibility and therefore the commissions will be offered across only the geographical area as described in Section 3 of this document.

Indicative commissioning numbers are set out in Section 3.

Exact numbers for each of the years will be identified following the annual workforce planning process.

The successful tenderer(s) will be awarded an education contract for an initial one-year period, followed by an option to extend, reviewed annually. The decision to extend will be based on performance as measured by the HEE-M education contract performance framework.

The contract for the provision will commence in September 2020 with the programmes commencing in Spring 2021.

Tenderers will need to demonstrate how they will meet any relevant national standards of education, for example, NHSE/I IAPT guidance and the British Psychological Society Standards for the accreditation of psychological wellbeing practitioner training programmes

Tenderers should evidence that they will be able to fulfil any other criteria outlined in this specification.