The procurement contact named on the official notice.

North of England Commissioning Support (NECS) is working for and on behalf of NHS Tees Valley Clinical Commissioning Group (the Contracting Authority) to conduct market engagement to obtain input into the development of a service model for Intermediate Care Beds for Older People in Darlington.

The Contracting Authority would like to gather soft intelligence from the market in relation to the service and will be holding a Market Engagement Event online via Microsoft Teams and will also be publishing a Request for Information (RFI) Intermediate care, for the purpose of this service, provides short term nursing, assessment, rehabilitation, re-ablement and recovery care and health crisis support, delivered in partnership with local health and social care organisations, to support people to improve or regain independence, health and wellbeing.

It provides an alternative to admissions into acute or long term care (step up) and to facilitate the transfer of care from hospital (step down), thus aiming to support people to return to their own homes as soon as possible and reduce the need for people to go back to hospital.

There are two elements to the service, referred to as bed based support for this two year contract which are: • Rehabilitation The service provider will provide 14 short stay rehabilitation beds (up to 6 weeks) with 24 hour residential care to residents who are registered with a Darlington GP and whose condition does not require support within an acute hospital setting.

There will also need to be the provision of a suitable space for therapy/rehabilitation services, including a gymnasium area and kitchen assessment area for patients and office space for therapy staff to utilise • Short stay nursing The service provider will also provide 9 short stay (up to 2 weeks) nursing beds, with 24 hour nursing care, to patients, registered with a Darlington GP, who: • are medically fit; • do not require acute hospital services; and • are not able to be safely discharged to their place of usual residence.

A market engagement event will be held at 10.30am - 12noon on the 24 March 2021 and 2.30pm - 4pm on the 25 March 2021 via Microsoft Teams.

Providers can choose to attend either one of the dates.

To attend the market engagement event please express your interest by registering on the In-Tend portal - https://in-tendhost.co.uk/nhsnecsu/aspx/home .

The service reference: NECS352 - Market Engagement for Intermediate Care Beds for Older People in Darlington Providers need to complete a registration form and return via the message service on In-Tend by 12 noon on the 22 March 2021.

Dial in details will be made available to all those that have completed and returned a registration form.

The RFI response questionnaire including draft service specifications for the service will be available for you to complete on the In-tend portal after noon on the 18 March 2021.

The deadline for the RFI response is 12 noon on 09 April 2021.

Please note that all communications and RFI submissions will be conducted via the Intend Portal only.

The portal can be accessed at any time of the day and it is free to register.

Please note that this exercise is not part of any pre-qualification process.

It is intended as an awareness, communication and information gathering exercise offering an opportunity for provider organisations to help inform potential future service models and/or commissioning intentions.