South West London Mental Health Support Teams

NHS South West London Integrated Care Board (SWL ICB) is currently developing its service specification and contracting process for the provision of Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) across South West London.

The SWL ICB is seeking to appoint a provider/s of Mental Health Support Teams to deliver MHSTs across local boroughs working with participating schools/colleges across all six boroughs of South West London to enable children and young people to access and receive the right emotional wellbeing and mental health support and remain in education. The services could be delivered by separate organisations, by the same organisation, or by different organisations bidding in partnership to provide a cohesive service.

The service is for children and young people who have mild to moderate mental health and emotional wellbeing needs, with the service comprising of delivering three core functions: evidence-based interventions, whole school/college approaches to mental health and emotional wellbeing, and the provision of timely advice to staff on signposting to other services in scope of the Service Specification.

The proposed contract length is 3+2 years with the service specification having an indicative current cost envelope of £11.7M (without accounting for potential service efficiencies). The ICB intend to vary the service contract to include the remaining MHSTs in the future to meet the national ambition of 100% coverage by December 2029 with the indicative contract value increasing by approximately 10% per year until March 2030 to deliver this ambition. All indicative future contract values are in alignment with nationally set funding formulas directly related to the level of maturity of each commissioned MHST across South West London.

NHS South West London Integrated Care Board (the ICB) is still finalising its decision in regard to future service provision and is inviting pre-market engagement to seek the views and opinions of those organisations that may be interested in becoming involved in delivering this future service.