Parent Infant Mental Health Service (PIMHS)

Market Engagement Event

Kent County Council (KCC) are anticipating procuring a Parent-Infant Mental Health (PIMH) Service to be in place from September 2025.

Please note that this Prior Information Notice (PIN) is not a call for competition at this stage. This is a notice to the market for an in person market engagement event on a planned future Service procurement under the Healthcare Service Provider Selection Regime (PSR).

The draft Service specification: outlines an approach for the market to consider and KCC would like organisations to come together at an in person market engagement event with other agencies for an opportunity to collaborate together on how you could deliver this proposed service. Please note updates have been made to the safeguarding sections of the draft Service specification and updated throughout to reflect how the proposed service could be delivered by a provider or providers who would like to work in a collaborative partnership.

This proposed service for Kent will engage families, embedding support and helping form healthy relationships with their infant.

Clinical psychologists, Occupational Therapists, specialist Infant Mental Health Practitioners, Psychotherapists, website and app designers will bring a range of skills to help deliver this proposed new and groundbreaking service for Kent.

You will be flexible in your approach to meet the differing needs of our population, including children in deep poverty as well as neurodivergent parents. Screening tools such as GAD7 will be utilised to identify need and interventions required.

The service will work as a team supporting families with identified needs who may have been referred by the health visiting service, accredited Video Interaction Guidance (VIG) practitioners and trained baby massage practitioners.

Important next steps:

Please read the draft Service specification and respond to the pre-engagement event questionnaire. Please note, to aid round table discussions and introductions at the market engagement event, responses will be collated into a document and shared with attendees.

We are seeking to collate and share:

1. What PIMH interventions do you currently deliver?
2. If any, what geographical areas do you cover in Kent or provide PIMH to?
3. How do you deliver PIMH services? For example in person, online etc.
4. No. of families supported around PIMH in the last year.
5. What do you consider to be your key areas of PIMH expertise? (maximum 3)
6. Who do you deliver interventions to? For example 0-2 years of age, Neurodivergent mothers etc.
7. Are you interested in being a lead provider / subcontracted provider or not sure?
8. What would you like other organisations to know about your provision?
9. What part(s) of the service are you most excited to deliver?

To request the draft Service specification please send an email to Sophia.dunstan@kent.gov.uk and respond to the pre-engagement event questionnaire through this link to the Microsoft Form forms.office.com/e/mjkcjmGHqa ↗

by 12:00 Monday 17th February 2025.

Market engagement event booking

This in an in-person event with NO option to join online remotely

Date: 24th February 2025

Venue: Sessions House (Medway Room), County Hall, Maidstone, Kent, ME14 1XQ

Time: 10.30am – 12.30pm.

The aim of the event is to:

• Share feedback from listening and previous engagement activities
• Give a brief overview of the proposed Service
• Provide opportunity discuss and explore collaborative approach to draft Service specification

The event will be a mixture of short presentations with time for discussion and collaboration. A detailed agenda to follow.

To book a place please follow the link to the pre-engagement event questionnaire through this link to the Microsoft Form forms.office.com/e/mjkcjmGHqa ↗ and select yes to attending by 12:00 Monday 17th February 2025. Without registering, you’ll be unable to attend the event.

We anticipate high interest in this event and would like to accommodate a variety of organisations. Spaces are limited to a maximum of 2 per organisation.

Guidance on visiting Session House, County Hall, Maidstone can be found at: www.kent.gov.uk/about-the-council/ou… ↗