Early Market Engagement for Psychological Assessment / Fitness for Work and Treatment Services

Description

The National Crime Agency (NCA) is publishing this PIN to invite interested suppliers to register their interest and participate in some staged market engagement. The NCA is looking to procure a replacement contract for the provision of Psychological Assessment / Fitness for Work and Treatment Services and, before launching the procurement, is keen to understand what the current market capacity is to deliver the required services and what the barriers might be to effective competition.<br/><br/>The contract is for an initial period of 2 years, plus 1, plus 1 (total max 4 years) with an estimated value in year 1 of £1m with a total spend up to £4m inclusive of VAT.<br/><br/>It should be noted that the current model as set out in the specification may change over the period of the contract in that the NCA are looking to recruit some of their own staff and as a result the current estimate of 24 days per week may reduce as the NCA increase their psychologist headcount.<br/><br/>The NCA is looking to conduct the market engagement activities in a series of stages commencing with providing bidders with the draft specification to set out the NCA’s technical and security requirements and the core contractual terms to the contract. Bidders are requested to complete the attached Request For Information questionnaire. The responses to this questionnaire will then be reviewed, and depending on the information received, the NCA reserves the right to engage with any of the respondents individually to clarify their responses.<br/><br/>The outcome of this process will then inform how these requirements will then be procured.<br/><br/>Deadline: Participants will need to complete in full and return the Request for Information questionnaire to the abovementioned Sourcing portal by 12:00 Monday 9th September 2024 Lot 1: The current arrangement for delivering Psychological Services is scheduled to terminate in Spring 2025 and so there is need to procure a suitable replacement.<br/>The provider will be required to supply suitably qualified, security cleared, and experienced psychologists to work closely with the NCA’s in-house Occupational Health Psychological Services to provide psychological health assessments and services to NCA officers in protected roles and across the NCA’s geographical footprint. To that end, the NCA has attached the draft specification to this notice. However, by way of a summary, the core (non-negotiable) requirements under the contract are detailed below.<br/><br/>Core Psychological Services<br/><br/>- Mandatory psychological routine surveillance assessments for high-risk roles;<br/>- Mandatory pre-placement and pre-employment assessments for high-risk roles;<br/>- Periodic psychological health monitoring;<br/>- Specialist psychological assessment following a referral;<br/>- Psychological post incident support;<br/>- Ad-hoc psychological consultation;<br/><br/>The provider will be required to commit to providing a minimum of 24 days of qualified personnel psychological provision per week initially, along with providing cover for leave, sickness (including cover for NCA permanent psychologists) and ad-hoc variable requirements which may arise. This will include a commitment from individual psychologists to work a minimum 3 days (0.6 FTE) per week. Psychologists will be offered hybrid working. <br/><br/>It is important to note that Psychologists will be required to align with NCA ways of working and will therefore be issued with NCA laptops and phones and will use NCA software and processes.<br/><br/>In addition to the core service delivery, there may be a requirement for additional and/ or bespoke support, such as (but not limited to) the following:<br/> <br/>- Psychological treatment/counselling;<br/>- Auditing roles on the Psychological Risk Matrix,<br/>- Assessment of needs to design and deliver bespoke events/support; and<br/>- Production of resources.<br/><br/>Qualifications<br/><br/>The Supplier will be required to provide suitably qualified and experienced staff, either directly or through their supply chain. The qualifications and experience required include. <br/><br/>- Registration with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) for a minimum of three years as a Counselling or Clinical Practitioner Psychologist. <br/>- Demonstrate specific experience of delivering psychological assessments for high-risk roles (e.g., policing, law enforcement, aviation, armed forces etc.) for a minimum of 12 consecutive months.<br/>- Have capability and experience in delivering: Compassion Focused Therapy, Cognitive Analytical Therapy, CBT, EMDR and trauma focused therapy.<br/>- Are experienced in delivering adult assessments over several mediums including face to face, video, and telephone.<br/>- Have flexibility to travel across the NCA footprint (UK and the devolved nations) as required, given reasonable notice.<br/><br/>Security Clearance<br/><br/>Due to the nature of the activities carried out by the NCA, it is essential that the supplier can provide staff that not only meet the qualification/ experience requirements above but who also meet the stipulated Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) checks and National Security Vetting (NSV) checks, at the relevant level. Details of the security requirements that must be met are set out in paragraph 16.4 of Section 16 of the Statement of Requirements.<br/><br/>With the current contract due to expire in Spring 2025, we need bidders with resources who already hold current DBS and ideally SC clearance, either from NCA or from any other central government body. (SC clearance can take in excess of 6 months where is no previous vetting compared to 8 weeks where an individual already hold SC for another department).<br/><br/><br/>Data and IT Requirements<br/><br/>In addition to the individual clearances detailed above, the organisations must also be able to demonstrate that their processes are compliant with the following mandated security requirements as a minimum:<br/><br/>- Cyber Essentials Plus (CE+) and Cyber Essentials Requirements for IT infrastructure 2020. Where certification for Cyber Essentials Plus is not held but certification for ISO 27001 is held and is accredited by the United Kingdom Accreditation Services (UKAS) the scope must include the controls listed within Cyber Essentials Plus; <br/>- HMG Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) 2018;<br/>- Off-Shoring – Cabinet Office Guidance 2020; and<br/>- Adherence to National Security Vetting;<br/><br/>Further details are set out in the attached specification. Additional information: We would like to invite interested parties to register their interest via the following Atamis Supplier Portal registration link https://nca-atamis.my.site.com/ProSpend__eSourcing_Community_Registration?locale=uk. <br/><br/>Any issues relating to portal registration should be directed to Atamis Support at support@atamis.co.uk<br/><br/>Any general queries about the PIN prior to registration can be sent to Commercial.NCAServices@nca.co.uk<br/><br/>As part of this notice, interested parties have access to a Request for Information questionnaire, the specification for the services and the envisaged core terms of contract which relate to the security and data obligations, as these are critical obligations against which suppliers will be required to deliver.<br/>To ensure there is sufficient capability and interest from the market in order to run any procurement, participants will need to complete in full and return the Request for Information questionnaire to the abovementioned Sourcing portal by:<br/>12:00 Monday 9th September 2024.<br/><br/>Please highlight any areas/barriers to bidding that you would like to discuss. <br/>The NCA encourage only those suppliers who can meet the stated requirements to register their interest and to engage with this process to aid in determining how the NCA moves forward with this requirement.<br/>Suppliers may submit any questions they have through the clarification section of the portal before the deadline for return of Request for Information questionnaires. <br/>However, it should be noted that due to this being a holiday period we cannot guarantee clarifications will be responded to within a certain timeframe.<br/>The option to engage with individual suppliers following the submission of competed RFI does not amount to a commitment to engage and any such engagement will be at the NCA’s sole discretion.