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Agenda item

An update on the Crisis Line

Representatives Clinical Commissioning Group /Avon & Wiltshire Mental Health Trust invited to attend (20mins)

Minutes:

Representatives from the Clinical Commissioning Group and Avon & Wiltshire Mental Health Trust presented an update on the work to improve the Crisis Line.

 

Welcomed the Public Forum item as it summarised the key points of the big piece of co-production work, of which Tom Renhard had been part of.

 

The committee received an overview of key facts of what the service is used for, the work undertaken so far and the preferred options for the future model.

 

·         An important but expensive resource in the form of a 24 hour telephone line to the crisis service had also been used primarily for admin calls which were not an effective use of the resource of a mental health professional.

·         This also blocked the line and can deter genuine crisis calls.

·         A presentation was given (appended) which looked at the nature of callers and the work done to identify needs of the service users via the Frequent Callers Plan and  an options Appraisal of the new system was presented.

The following remarks were received:

Q1.Cllr Brenda Massey felt it was essential to keep the auto cues and messages as brief as possible.

 

A1. It was confirmed that the language of the system was being developed with service users and that there was a keen awareness of the feelings of frustration generated by getting stuck in an automated system.

 

Q2. Cllr Jos Clark – Queried if people with dementia use the line and if so how they are worked with by practitioners?


A2. The original data had not shown a lot of people phoning for dementia welfare.

 

Q3. Cllr Gill Kirk – Felt the Co-production was very positive and welcomed the evidence based approach; a model that could be learned from. More detail was requested on the criteria for a “crisis” as opposed to an emergency/999 call. The capacity of the Professional’s Line was also queried.

 

A3. The Project Board had mapped exactly the number of calls going to different places based on the proposed options change. Capacity on the PL had been factored in as well as work with all the teams to see how this might affect their work flow.

 

A3. A Mental Health Emergency was clarified as someone at imminent risk who needs to speak to a professional before they need a 999.

 

Q4. Cllr Anna Keen- Echoed thanks for a great piece of work and was encouraged by the effort put into collaborative working. Flagged issues with boundaries and how organisations divide up the city and asked if there could be clarity in the AWP Messaging on this.

Q5. It was queried if there were a list of numbers somewhere for people to use who don’t know the system? 

 

A.5 AWP was redeveloping their website and useful numbers were to be published there.  CL had been highly publicised and really well known and new leaflets were also planned.

 

Q6. Cllr Mark Brain - Concerns were over the automated systems and messages, and it was felt that monitoring was crucial to assure it didn’t deter people.

 

A6. Service Users had been consulted and  welcomed the call management system especially that you could  get through without talking which was good for someone user in an emergency, too anxious to speak.

 

Q7. Cllr Eleanor Combley – highlighted the need for routes out of the wrong branches just in case people pick the wrong options on the system and the need for help to steer the users to appropriate services.