The Cabinet Procurement and Insourcing Committee has decided to appoint three suppliers to a framework contract for Supported Internships for young people with SEND.

URL: https://hackney.moderngov.co.uk/ieDecisionDetails.aspx?ID=8419

Decision Maker: Cabinet Procurement and Insourcing Committee

Outcome:

Is Key Decision?: Yes

Is Callable In?: Yes

Purpose: Contract award report to appoint up to 3 suppliers to a framework for the provision of Supported Internship for young people with SEND, for a duration of two years with an option to extend for a further two years, commencing in September 2025. Supported Internships are structured, work-based study programs for 16 to 25-year-olds with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) who have an education, health, and care plan (EHCP).   Initial date added to the Notice: 1 April 2025  

Content: Contract award report to appoint up to 3 suppliers to a framework for the provision of Supported Internship for young people with SEND, for a duration of two years with an option to extend for a further two years, commencing in September 2025. Supported Internships are structured, work-based study programs for 16 to 25-year-olds with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) who have an education, health, and care plan (EHCP).   Initial date added to the Notice: 1 April 2025   RESOLVED:   The appointment of the three suppliers listed in Exempt Appendix A to a framework contract for the provision of Supported Internships for up to 180 young people with an EHCP (Education Health Care Plan) per year. Commencing on 1st September 2025 the framework will be for an initial two years with options for two further annual extensions (2+1+1). The maximum value of the activity to be delivered through the framework will be £3,300,000.   Reasons for Decision   Supported internships are structured, work-based study programs for 16 to 24-year-olds with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) who have an education, health, and care plan (EHCP). The program provides young people with a work placement with the support of an expert job coach. This provides the opportunity for young people to achieve sustained, paid employment by giving them the skills they need for work through learning in the workplace.   The Supported Internship program has been running since the beginning of the 2017/18 academic year. At the time, the head of Finance for Hackney Learning Trust, as the Education Department was known, authorised two outsourced providers through an STA.   The current framework was procured in 2021 and awarded to the current  provider for two years. It has since been extended for 12 months on two occasions and will end in August 2025. No further extension options were available and therefore there was a need to complete a new procurement in  order to continue with this successful programme.   The Council’s Supported Employment Team also began delivering one Supported Internship at the beginning of the 2018/19 academic year, which increased to two at the start of the 2019/20 academic year. The intention is to continue with this element of insourced supported internship provision but there is not the capacity to expand this provision further.   The current provider has worked well during the contract and has helped a range of young people with various SEND needs progress toward an appropriate work outcome. Between the beginning of the 2020/21 academic year and the end of the 2023/24 academic year, the current provider has worked with fifty-six young people with some quite complex SEND needs and an EHC Plan. Fourteen young people have gained paid employment, and another fourteen have moved on to a work-based paid program such as a Traineeship or Apprenticeship. This equates to a 50% success rate in helping the young people progress to an employment-based outcome following their Supported Internship.   Since the Procurement Business Case was approved by the Group Director of Children and Education Directorate SEND have completed an open tender process with the support of the Procurement Senior Category Manager for Education.   A PIN (Prior Information Notice) was published on 10 February 2025 so bidders could be notified when the tender was published with 43 organisations registering their interest in the upcoming opportunity. The tender was published on the 20th February 2025 with a return date of 27 March 2025 with 5 organisations submitting a tender.   Following the completion of a tender exercise CPIC is recommended to  award framework contracts to up to 3 (three) providers as multiple providers will offer greater diversity in the range of internships available.   The framework contract will be for two years as long as the required KPIs are being met. The contract will also include a pricing mechanism, which will result in the per placement cost being fixed for the two years of the contract but with the facility for negotiation of a price increase should the national government mandate an increase in the cost of the London Living Wage and general inflation rates.  The cost associated with the contract will be met from the SEND High Needs budget, which has been factored in for the life of the contract.   Alternative Options Considered and Rejected   The current framework will expire in August 2025, and a tender process has been carried out to create a framework of up to 3 suppliers. However, other options have been considered detailed below:   Option 1: Do Nothing: Doing nothing is not a viable option. Local Authorities have a statutory responsibility to work with young people with SEND and an EHC Plan from year 9 onwards to help them prepare for the transition to Adulthood. Supported internships provide a  tried and trusted mechanism by which local authorities across the UK can assist young people with SEND to meet the employment outcome of the PfA (preparing for adulthood) agenda and meet their statutory duties for young people with SEND.   Option 2: Insourcing The Council’s internal Supported Employment Team currently facilitates Supported Internships which offer work placements within various departments of the Council.  However, if the Council’s internal Supported Employment Team were expanded to offer more Supported Internships, this would result in a very limited scope of options if a young person does not want to work in a hospital or council environment.  This lack of breadth in terms of choice of work placement means that the Supported Internships facilitated by the council are not viable options and demonstrates why it is necessary that alternative Supported Internship providers are procured to ensure that there are varied work placement opportunities.   Option 3: Call off from another framework: There is currently no available framework (such as ESPO or CCS) available for Hackney Education to simply call off an off the shelf product.   The tender was not separated into lots as there were no additional benefits from doing so.  Appointing three providers to the framework will allow for sufficient choice in terms of the type of internships available to young people on the program, as well as being accessible to smaller providers, without the need to separate the tender into lots. The opportunity was published on the Hackney Council website as well as Contracts Finder to ensure local providers were made aware of the tender opportunity.

Date of Decision: July 7, 2025