We engaged Greenville Procurement Partners for two stands of work:

1. Evaluation of the Implementation of the National HF programme in Ireland - In December 2019 a contract was awarded to the University of Limerick. Dr Ronni Greenwood will lead the evaluation. The study will be grounded in the service users’ experiences of these supports.
2. The Provision of Specialist Housing First training in Ireland – this tender process was cancelled due to the fact that the two tenders received were not fully completed and we were unable to carry out a full evaluation.

Following the cancellation of the training tender a National Housing First Training Manual was commissioned:

• Dr Sam Tsemberis, founder of Pathways to Housing First in the US, has been contracted to work with a small group of international experts to develop a National Housing First Training Manual.
• The manual will put service user involvement, peer work and co-production at the heart of service delivery in HF in Ireland.
• This is being developed with the support of an Irish Editorial Advisory Board and input from the 9 Housing First Regions* nationally.
• The manual will have an open license for all those organisations and individuals that wish to use it and comply with the quality assurance processes.
• Training for Housing First will be delivered by each individual service provider. All training which adheres to the manual and the quality assurance processes, will be certified by the National Housing First Programme.

Note: This did not go through a procurement process as the cost of this particular route was greatly reduced and therefore did not require public procurement. Dr Sam Tsemberis is recognised as the leading expert in Housing First internationally.

*The 9 Housing First regions – Dublin, Mid-East, Midlands, Mid-West, North-East, North-West, South-East, South-West, West.