Survey: Mind Mental Health Support Line pilot

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The five CCGs in Norfolk are examining whether to continue funding the Mind Mental Health Support Line pilot.

What are you experiences of using the service?

There are lots of ways to let us know what you think: you can vote in the poll, contact us, comment below or join us at our next meeting where this item is on the agenda.

Let us know what you think.

 

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9 thoughts on “Survey: Mind Mental Health Support Line pilot”

  1. In no way wishing to demean the people at Mind but this service was yet another example of penny pinching by NSFT.  After decimating CRHT services with the idiotic radical redesign the CRHT teams were utterly overloaded and on the verge of breakdown. Instead of admitting that the radical redesign was deeply flawed and put patients at risk, a cheaper option was to divert load through Mind, reducing the load on core crisis services. All that has been achieved is another layer of bureaucracy for people in crisis, having to be triaged through Mind before accessing core crisis teams.

    The truth is that NSFT will save money wherever it can, the quality of the service and patient safety are mere afterthoughts.

     

  2. My daughter, a frequent service user, who has submitted 2 serious complaints about Crisis Team, was never even told about the MIND Support Line. We would have all preferred though to have access to proper, prompt and reliable NHS care, rather than a support line, no matter how good (and they are good) MIND advisers are.

  3. I have only heard good things from the patients I work with who have used the mind support line and only bad things about the crisis team when they tried to access support there.  It is a shame though that it has become the situation where CRHT can’t provide the telephone support, however- if it is working for those who are using it and costs less, why shouldn’t it be kept? Use the extra money elsewhere.

  4. I think we should look at the whole issue of how people get access to help when in crisis and when in need of urgent psychiatric treatment and care. We live in a huge rural area where transport systems are inadequate. We need restoration of the Link Workers – trained and qualified community mental health workers backed up by mental health social workers – based at GP surgeries, supporting and advising GPs and seeing patients quickly and locally. Then we need a comprehensive psychiatric liaison service based at A&E, i.e. a walk-in emergency psychiatric service. The amalgamated Crisis Resolution and Home Treatment Team cannot cover the whole of Central Norfolk, from Wells in North Norfolk to Diss in the South, including the whole of Norwich. We used to have two teams covering this vast area but they were amalgamated to save money. While I worked for the Crisis Team we never had an adequate phone system to act as a crisis service and we were never staffed adequately especially in the evening and night to cope with the demands. The situation was made worse because the Crisis Team was constantly drawn on to cover gaps elsewhere in the service. The stress level placed on the person-in-charge of shifts was horrendous. The problem with the Mind Support Line acting as a gateway to NHS crisis help is that those operating the line are not professionally trained and do not have access to patient records. The best predictor of risk is previous behaviour. If you do not know the patient’s history, diagnosis, crisis plan etc how can you make a call? There is a role for a Mind Support Line, just as there is for the Samaritans, and other Helplines, but it should not be to replace core NHS care; this is one of the aims of the current Mind Support Line since it is only designed to be used by patients currently open to the NHS Specialist mental health service, or to people recently discharged. In my view it should act as a Support/advice line for the general public. This Mind Support Line is not adequately funded, just as with the Trust’s crisis team, to deliver a real crisis service.

  5. I can only say that I asked this question at the last NSFT Board of Directors Meeting and the reply was that they do not have access to patient’s medical records. I also asked how many patients under the care of NSFT have crisis plans, and are these crisis plans available out of hours. An answer is promised.

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