Tanya Johnson talks about the First Response Service for people in crisis
So, the first response team work alongside the crisis team. And they help service users and those who aren’t known to mental health services access support. They can signpost people to other support networks such as wellbeing or support groups, bereavement services, young people’s services and some valuable apps which are quite useful to help people that are feeling in distress or have high levels of anxiety. Predominantly, we’re crisis support. Service users tend to be – it’s a major service so we’ll support anybody of any age, but some people are in crisis, some people are just looking for some advice and some support with what they’re going through at that time.
So, with the first response service, people can access support straight away. There’s no long wait for A&E. People can be triaged and given support or signposted or given the relevant referral to mental health services instantly.
Knowing that somebody who felt that they couldn’t cope, that they couldn’t go on any longer- you could reassure them and put a plan in place so they can just get through to the next day is just really [pause] it’s just really rewarding. Very rewarding. And no day is the same.
So, we do have the opportunity to sometimes find out how people have got on. Whether they’ve been seen by the crisis team. So, sometimes we can follow that service because we can go along with the crisis team to assess patients.
So, you know – it’s nice to sort of have that kind of feedback or knowledge on what’s happened. From service users, a lot of them – some of them say that they’d never heard of the service and are really grateful to have been able to use the service once they’d been able to access it.
You can find more information on the #averydifferentconversation crisis page.
