People who use our mental health services tell us they want more options for support when they are in crisis.
They also wish that teams could work more closely together to reduce the number of times they have to give personal information and tell their story.
That’s why we’re improving our mental health services to be:
- more joined up
- quicker and easier to access
- more focused on prevention, avoiding crises and unnecessary admissions to hospital
Lambeth Single Point of Access
This service launched in September 2019. Get in touch if you are worried about your mental health, and need more support than your GP can provide.
- Visit www.lambethtogether.net/spa and fill out a form to introduce yourself
- Ask a friend or family member to contact us on your behalf
- Visit your GP and ask them to contact us on your behalf
- Call Lambeth Single Point of Access on 0800 090 2456
(Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm)
You can also be introduced to the Single Point of Access by other professionals, such as hospital staff and police officers.
Depending on your needs, the most likely form of support will be from one of our new Living Well Centres.
Living Well Centres
Three new Living Well Centres will be the base for community mental health services in the borough.
The centres will contain teams made up of:
- psychiatrists
- therapists
- nurses
- social workers
- voluntary and community workers
These people are experienced in dealing with a wide range of mental health conditions. Some of them will have experienced such conditions themselves.
Living Well Centres will offer:
- short-term support for those with low to moderate needs from our combined team of clinicians, social workers and support workers
- medium to long-term support for those with greater need from our focused support team
The Living Well Centres will be open 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday.
Other services
We are also launching some other new services to improve mental health in Lambeth:
- Crisis Outreach Service – support for people in crisis aged 18 to 65 who are not in contact with a mental health team. Open Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm.
- Peer support line – a 24/7 service for people experiencing mental health difficulties, staffed by people who have experienced such difficulties themselves. This is planned to start in autumn 2019.
- Outreach service – voluntary and community workers based in different communities who will reach out to those who need support but, for whatever reason, have not been able or willing to ask for it. This is planned to start in early 2020.
Better care for Lambeth residents
By joining up services, there will be less need for you to have repeat assessments or unnecessary referrals from one part of the system to another.
We will give you more of a say in your own care, treating you, and those that care about you, as equal partners in your support and recovery.
For healthcare professionals: what it means
The new approach will allow specialist NHS and local authority staff to spend more of their time using the skills and expertise that they were trained for to help people.
We will also significantly increase the number of people from voluntary and community organisations working in Lambeth, including the number of people who have experienced mental health issues themselves. You have told us that dealing with those who may have been through similar things can be very helpful.
What’s happening next
The crisis outreach service and short-term support service will be available from November 2019.
More services will follow later in 2019.
Who’s involved
The Living Well Alliance partners are:
- Certitude
- Lambeth Council
- NHS South East London
- South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust
- Thames Reach