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Crisis Care

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"Crisis Care"

About: Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust

There is no crisis care this Trust. At weekends and Friday night when they know it's the busiest time you can ring Camden Crisis Team number and it will ring continuously for 20 odd rings, never connect to an answerphone, never get picked up. When challenged about this their response was not 'we are sorry' ( this trust never says sorry) - but 'we must have been busy in A&E - we have other people to see and talk to as well you know'. So complacent about peoples's lives and risks and fears and carers desperate they cant even be bothered to switch on an answerphone at the period of the week when they know people struggle. This has happened several times and they never say sorry. If you are able to leave a message it can take over 24 hrs for them to respond and then they try once and don't bother again. So many people are harmed by this and they really don't seem to care.

If you do get taken or go to an A&E you will wait hours and hours to be seen and days if you then need a bed. What the crisis team in Camden do all the time is send the police to do 'welfare checks' knowing that this increases the risk to very ill people. The policeman who comes to my brother says it is so they can tick a box and shut the file down as actioned. It is an awful awful Trust and has been for several years and CQC think so aswell. If you are acutely unwell you'd be better off roaming the streets of London as you will get more support from complete strangers than you ever will from a CANDI crisis team.

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Responses

Response from Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust 7 years ago
Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust

Submitted on 13/12/2016 at 13:54
Published on nhs.uk on 14/12/2016 at 01:33

We are very sorry to read of your experience. It is very important to us that we deliver services that are responsive and caring.

The Camden and Islington Crisis Teams operate a call centre Monday to Sunday, 365 days per year between 8am and 8:30pm.

During these hours there are up to 6 clinicians, at peak time, responding to calls. At night time, the service is run by a single staff member per borough who responds to in person visits at the various emergency departments within the trust in addition to answering calls, or messages where they are not able to respond immediately. Staff are instructed to reply to all messages as soon as able although this time can vary dependent on the nature of the work.

During the course of the day there are fluctuating volumes of calls so if all operators are engaged, you might be asked to leave a message on the voicemail system rather than continue to wait until staff members are available to respond directly. Again, staff regularly check the voicemail system and respond to voicemails left often within the hour.

The crisis teams are currently unable to respond to emergency call outs for mental health crises, although we are hoping to roll out an urgent response service (within 4 hours) by April 2017 across both Camden and Islington.

Due to this limitation, there might be times when it is more appropriate for us to engage with London Ambulance or Metropolitan police services and request an emergency response if we are concerned that a member of the public is in immediate danger.

Anybody else who is referred to the service in crisis and who is felt to be in need of a crisis response, we endeavour to see within 24 hours.

In relation to the emergency departments, service users can experience delays at peak times in finding a bed if a decision to admit has been agreed – otherwise all referrals to the mental health team, once processed by the local hospitals are seen within the hour. Our bed management team continue to address the issue of admission and discharge on a daily basis and are working towards creating better systems to manage this so that all service users who clinically need an acute bed are offered one as soon as possible.

From your online post it was not possible to identify a specific incident but if you would like us to look into this further so that we can provide you with an individual reply to your concern, please do contact the trust on: feedback@candi.nhs.uk

If you would like to raise a specific concern about the Camden Crisis Teams, please contact team manager, Anoushka Khorramian, directly on:

Telephone: 020 3317 6323

Email: anoushka.khorramian@candi.nhs.uk

Kind regards

Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust

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