Supporting People in Crisis, 2018

We published recommendations on how to improve support for people experiencing a mental health crisis in November 2018. As a result of this work North Tyneside Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) has commissioned a low-level crisis support service through Together in a Crisis for people who are unable to access the Crisis Resolution and Home Treatment Service.

We worked alongside service users, commissioners and service providers, to design the research and review what we heard. Our recommendations were based on what 215 service users, carers and staff told us about their experiences of accessing crisis support.

The key areas we identified were:

• People being turned away from crisis services due to not meeting the criteria of being in ‘crisis’
• People experiencing long waiting times for various services to respond
• People feeling they had received a good level of support once they had accessed services
• People experiencing the discharge process as disjointed and self-led

We continue to work with North Tyneside’s Mental Health Integration Boards to ensure that service providers and commissioners respond to our report recommendations.

This report covers:

• What we did
• Defining crisis
• Accessing services
• Receiving services
• Leaving services
• Cross-cutting factors
• What next