Share your feedback on accessing mental health support in a crisis
What is happening with our mental health crisis services?
We’ve stepped up our work to listen to vital feedback from our communities on how we provide mental health crisis care. We have worked closely with people with lived experience of mental illness, as well as carers, our own staff, and our partners in health, care and community organisations including the emergency services.
This has been a significant piece of engagement to review how people can access rapid mental health assessment and effective crisis support to ensure the best possible care for people when they need it most.
This message is to update you on the work we have done so far, and what’s happening next.
Why are we reviewing these services?
Right now, too many people are going to A&E when they have a mental health crisis, rather than accessing the support they need directly from our local borough crisis services.
When people do use our crisis services, some are experiencing delays, are not getting the support they need out of hours or are being assessed more than once by different teams.
Patients told us that travelling to a central hub across five boroughs when they are in crisis is challenging – and that care closer to home would be far more supportive.
What's happened so far?
We’ve already made some changes in response – we’ve bolstered and enhanced our Home Treatment Teams so they can assess people in crisis at any time on any day of the week in their own homes, or within one of our team bases across the five boroughs we serve, rather than asking them to attend a central hub in Wandsworth.
We have sought to understand people’s experiences of using our crisis services and to identify the key challenges within the current pathway.
We carried out extensive and meaningful engagement with our communities, staff, and partners as part of our crisis pathway redesign. To bring an external viewpoint into our work, we collaborated with the national Mental Health Getting It Right First Time team and colleagues across the South West London system. We convened a further stakeholder workshop that brought together a broad range of partners and people with lived experience. Alongside this, we ran a public survey that received more than 175 responses – over half from service users and carers – supported by focus groups, one to one discussions, and conversations with Healthwatch and local GPs.
What have we found out?
We’ve heard consistent key themes, including a need for:
- clearer crisis pathway with better communication and links across crisis and other services
- Improved support from crisis lines
- Better support following an inpatient stay
- Improved visibility of collaborative care plans
- More focus on prevention and carer involvement
What’s our vision?
We developed our vision for our crisis services after talking with our communities, partners and colleagues. We want to provide a patient-centred service which offers 24/7 crisis support that:
- Provides the least restrictive care possible
- Offers responsive care based in the community with continuity between services
- Is delivered by compassionate and skilled professionals who work together well
What’s happening next?
Within our wider improvement programme, we have established a set of crisis pathway workstreams, shaped by and involving people with lived experience to explore ideas and develop options to address the themes we’ve heard. These groups will develop a set of recommendations for further changes, that will take effect from spring 2026.
We will update you again later in the Spring on how our crisis pathway will change, how we will test and refine our ideas, and finally how we will measure success in our ambition to deliver a patient-centred service offering 24/7 crisis support.
How do I access crisis support now and in the future?
People across our boroughs will continue to access support for themselves or others in the same way, either by dialling NHS111 and selecting option 2 or via our Mental Health Crisis Line on 0800 028 8000. No-one needs to do anything differently.
You can find out more about how to get urgent mental health support on our website. For more information, please contact communications@swlstg.nhs.uk.
