COMMISSIONING: mentoring service at HMP Norwich

• Posted by Joe Gardham on October 14, 2011 at 3:56pm in Funding

Mentoring Project HMP Norwich
Reference number: 1544-1-Reducing Reoffending-SE-RFI
Deadline date: 27/10/2011
This deadline is for... Expression of Interests
Value: £60,750 - £81,000
Main site of work/delivery: East of EnglandHMP Norwich, Knox Road, Norwich, Norfolk, NR1 4LU
Is this suitable for smaller suppliers? Yes
Name of the buying organisation: Ministry of Justice (MoJ) Procurement - CMT L&SE


Description of the contract
The Mentoring Scheme will support men serving short sentences, older prisoners and those on the ‘Chaplefeild Project released from HMP Norwich is intended to help with problems relating to accommodation; education training and employment; health; drugs and alcohol; finance benefits and debt; and children and families. By doing this the scheme intends to help men to lead offence free lives. The budget allocated to this Contract is £27,000 per annum.

Documents
Service Specification (Mentoring Sepc Norwich.doc, 370kb) SEE BELOW

Classification of the contract
75231200 - Services related to the detention or rehabilitation of criminals

Additional information
What the notice is for: Services - Unspecified
Is this contract a framework agreement or part of one? No
Is this contract related to a programme of funding? No
The contract will be awarded based on... Most economically advantageous tender in terms of: The criteria stated in the contract documents
Length of contract: 01/01/2012 - 31/03/2014

Contact details
Contact name: Kerry Chon
Address: Clive House, 70 Petty France, London, London, SW1H 9HD
Email: RPU.LondonSouthEast@noms.gsi.gov.uk

How to apply
The Ministry of Justice will be running this process through its eSourcing Portal. The eSourcing Portal is an online application that allows all potential suppliers to create and submit their responses to any Requests for Information, Requests for Quotes, or Requests for Proposals via the internet rather than in paper form (where they have been invited to respond). The eSourcing Portal will also be used by the Ministry of Justice to run Reverse Auctions. If you are not registered on the eSourcing Portal please send an email to the relevant buyer as stated in the notice/advert or to steve.mcgarvie@noms.gsi.gov.uk stating: Company Name, Your Name, Contact email & Sourcing Reference Number: 1544-1-Reducing Reoffending-SE-RFI. The buyer will then contact you with the registration process. If you are already registered on the eSourcing Portal, please contact the relevant Buyer expressing your interest in the sourcing event. The buyer will contact all providers whom have expressed an interest in the tender by email on 31st Oct outlining the next stage of the procurement process. Transparency: HM Government requires that tender documentation issued by government departments for contracts with a value exceeding £10,000 over the life of the contract are published online (www.businesslink.gov.uk) for the general public. The resulting contract shall also be published. The Ministry of Justice may use its discretion to redact information to protect key commercial interests or on prescribed grounds. Therefore, bidders who wish information not to be published if successful should secure agreement with the Ministry of Justice prior to submission. Only documentation relating to awarded contracts will be published. Key commercial interests would be trade secrets and commercial interests which would be prejudiced by publication, following the tests in section 43 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. http://www.justice.gov.uk/guidance/docs/foi-exemption-s43.pdf The prescribed grounds for redaction are: (a) national security; (b) personal data; (c) information protected by intellectual property law; (d) information which it is not in the public interest to disclose (following the tests under the Freedom of Information Act 2000) (e) third party confidential information; (f) IT security; or (g) prevention of fraud

Conservative Conference 2011: Blunt calls for adult prisoners to mentor young offenders

By Lauren Higgs Monday, 03 October 2011

Adult prisoners should be drafted in to mentor young offenders in custody under plans to give prison and probation professionals more freedom to run innovative schemes, the youth justice minister Crispin Blunt has claimed.

Speaking at a Conservative Party Conference event organised by the Transition to Adulthood Alliance, Blunt cited Portland Young Offender Institution (YOI) in Dorset as an example of how professional autonomy can lead to excellent practice.

"I want to give freedom to prison governors to actually get adult prisoners into YOIs, so they can act as mentors and exorcise a moderating influence on the behaviour of young offenders, as they have in Portland," he explained. "The adult prisoners who are being brought in are taking responsibility for the young offenders so it works well for both sides."

"That is a simple example of what happens when professionals have the freedom to make decisions, to try and do things that address the challenges they are facing. The worst thing that could happen would be for us to sit in the centre and to prescribe what we want professionals to do."

Blunt argued that such professional freedom is necessary to complement the expansion of payment-by-results in the field of youth justice.

"We must enfranchise professionals to deliver the different interventions that different individuals require," he said.

"What we want to do, partly through payment-by-results, is to allow professionals to make decisions and give them the freedom and ability to engage with the whole of the private and voluntary sectors as well, in order to construct the right interventions."

Clive Martin, director of Clinks – a national membership body that supports the involvement of voluntary and community organisations in the criminal justice system – claimed that government should offer some guidance to voluntary sector organisations delivering payment-by-results work in the youth justice sector.

"We do know that we can reduce reoffending using measures that restrict personal freedom and probably limit rehabilitation in its wider sense, such as tagging, control orders and those sorts of things," he said.

"So there is a danger that by just adopting the rhetoric of payment-by-results and assuming that it’s good without stating the principles that should underpin it, you could end up with interventions that aren’t exactly where we want to be. We need some principles to guide us."

The Clink Restaurant starts mentoring scheme

FM World 22 September 2011

The Clink Charity, a commercial restaurant operating inside a British prison, has launched an ex-offender career-mentoring scheme.

The Clink operates what it claims is the first “public access restaurant” in the prison regime, in Her Majesty’s Prison High Down, Surrey.

“Its logic is rooted in the power of rehabilitation to remedy the degenerative effect of prison sentences on those convicted,” according to The Clink.

Prisoners who have qualified as chefs and waiters, complete with practical kitchen and restaurant experience at The Clink, will receive professional support and guidance after leaving prison and start looking for work.

The mentoring scheme is being done in conjunction with Springboard, an educational charity.

Mentoring will include three or four visits by an assigned mentor during the prisoner’s last month in prison and include an interview with the prisoner’s prospective employer, if they have one.

The mentor will accompany the graduate to their accommodation, if required, and also take the graduate to work on his first day and arrange a travel card as required.

Also, the mentor will meet the graduate each week in their work place for three to six months.

Chris Moore, chief executive of The Clink Charity, said The Clink “has successfully trained 84 prisoners to date and this graduate mentoring scheme, launched in partnership with Springboard, will implement crucial employment mentoring in the months before and after a prisoner’s release”.