The Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner (OPCC) has previously provided funding to the four Community Safety Partnerships across Cleveland to commission a Targeted Youth Outreach Service, which has then been directed by the Local Authority Community Safety leads.
As part of the PCC for Cleveland’s commissioning strategy a decision was taken to formalise the arrangement and put in place contracts directly with service providers to deliver a new service which was targeted in areas of most need.
By directly commissioning the service going forwards the OPCC aims to bring tasking and coordinating of the service into Cleveland Police, with Neighbourhood Police Teams taking responsibility for directing the activity of the Service to areas of need as identified through analysis of reported crime and antisocial behaviour patterns together with softer intelligence received from partner organisations. This will assist in ensuring that the commissioned activity directly contributes to the aims of Neighbourhood Policing across Cleveland as part of the PCC’s commitment to further embed neighbourhood policing across Cleveland.
The key outcomes of the services are:
- Reduction in youth antisocial behaviour
- Reduction in youth violence
- Improved youth mental health through positive activity
- Increased engagement of young people in positive activity
- Raise aspirations of young people in the areas identified
- Increased community confidence through building relationships between the community and community safety services
- Increased referrals of young people to support services
- Increased feelings of safety in young people The key outputs needed to achieve these outcomes are:
- Full range of activities and interventions suitable for young people aged 5 to 18, co-produced with young people
- Comprehensive needs assessment process including onward referral mechanisms
- Established partnership framework and community network
The commissioning of this service links to the Police and Crime Plan objectives ‘Tackling Antisocial Behaviour Head on’ and Prevent, Reduce and Tackle Serious Violence’.
This decision notice is to advise the PCC of the procurement process undertaken during the recent exercise to award contracts for Targeted Detached Youth Services.
An engagement event was held in October 2021 with potential service providers. The engagement event was designed to give potential service providers the opportunity to feed their expertise into the specification and gain an understanding of the procurement process which would be followed.
An open tender was carried out using EU Supply as the tender portal, advertising the contract in Contract Finder as per the Public Procurement Regulations 2015.
The contract was split into four lots: Lot 1 — Middlesbrough, Lot 2 — Stockton, Lot 3 — Redcar and Cleveland and Lot 4 — Hartlepool.
Details of the Procurement Process are included in the appended report.