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

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.