Suffolk Community Connector Service (SCCS)

The aim of the SCCS is to provide an alternative community offer to the traditional recovery team community support offered by our secondary care NHS provider, Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust.

Key objectives of the service include:

• to offer virtual support to a range of people alongside face-to-face support.
• for individuals to access support, goal focused planning and activities in their local community.
• encourage people from 18+ to work towards a specific goal or receive impartial support and information.
• offer to people who have been discharged by secondary care as part of their discharge plan.
• offer to people who have greater need than a primary care offer.
• designed to be in place to compliment psychological therapies through Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) (Suffolk Wellbeing Service: NSFT).
• help introduce other additional support through a variety of voluntary and mental health groups.

The Contract was previously commissioned for 3 years (including 6m extension) this proposal aligns the contract to expire when the other crisis alternative contracts end and can be reprocured following a full service review. Contract will run from 1st July 2025 to 31st March 2027 with no option to extend.

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