Crisis response services

Stigma Statistics’ Suicide Tracking Analysis and Reporting (STAR) platform enables the sharing of information relating to suspected suicides in real time. The tool allows data to be collected for any sudden death where suicide is suspected whether it be from the police or coroner and shares data with and notifies identified key stakeholders who can then input data they hold about the person.

As part of the Urgent and Emergency Care Vanguard programme in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, a pilot scheme commenced in September 2019 to extend the NHS 111 service to enable people who are experiencing a mental health crisis to dial the NHS urgent medical advice number and chose option 2 which will put them through to a member of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust’s First Response Service.

S12 Solutions is a digital tool (phone application and web platform) that was designed to support Mental Health Professionals to undertake Mental Health Act (MHA) assessments.

The Mental Health Crisis Decision Support Tool was introduced into the Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust to predict the likelihood of mental health crisis.

In 2016/17, Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust commenced work to embed outcome measurement in routine practice through the Psychological Medicine Clinical Network. Adopting the Framework for Routine Outcome Measurement in Liaison Psychiatry transformed the reports the participants sent to commissioners and managers and enabled the services to analyse what they were doing, whether they were helping and include patients’ own words to describe their experience.

Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust have collaborated with Northumbria police forces on mapping and redesigning crisis care pathways leading to Northumbria being one of the areas in the country with the lowest numbers of people detained under Section 136 of the Mental Health Act.

The CQC assessment of mental health services in acute trust references the work of 27 London acute emergency departments to audit people presenting at emergency departments in August 2019 with a mental health related problem

NHS England / Improvement have published a summary of work within London whereby people experiencing a mental health crisis will be sent a specialist blue light mental health car staffed by a mental health nurse and a paramedic instead of a traditional ambulance. By responding together, the specialist ambulance crew has an aspiration to reduce mental health hospital admissions from 58,000 to 30,000 per year once rolled out across London.

The Mental Health Crisis Concordat was published by the Welsh Government in 2015 and is a shared statement of commitment in responding to mental health crisis with services such as the police, NHS, the Welsh Ambulance Service and Local Authorities.

The Concordat sets out how partners can work together to deliver a quality response when people with acute mental health crisis, need help, have contact with the Police and who are likely to be detained under Section 135 or Section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983.

The PDU was developed to provide an alternative pathway for patients accessing emergency departments and other services, such as the police and ambulance services. The PDU is an ambulant assessment area which provides a calming environment for the assessment and development of treatment plans for more complex service users who are in crisis and are accessing emergency services.

The Mental Health Alliance for Excellence, Resilience, Innovation and Training (MERIT) provider collaborative was established in 2016 as a vanguard site in response to the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health and was initially comprised of Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, Black Country Partnership NHS Trust, Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership NHS Trust and Dudley and Walsall Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust. Their focus is on proactive early intervention care rather than reactive crisis management, which is achieved by promoting a recovery culture and providing crisis care and reduction of risk, which is used everyday in acute services.

In December 2018, a pilot was introduced in Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre to respond to people experiencing mental health crisis as a partnership between Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust, North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) and Lancashire Constabulary. This involves a senior mental health nurse, a paramedic and a police officer coming together as a crew in a NWAS vehicle to jointly attend to people experiencing a mental health crisis

Mental Health and Specialist Services in Australia’s Gold Coast undertook work in 2015 to implement a systems approach to suicide prevention using the Zero Suicide Framework (ZSF). This resulted in reductions in the rates of repeated suicide attempts and the number of deaths by suicide