“However, the care these teams offer varies widely across the country. These services are also being restricted by a lack of input from healthcare professionals, especially consultant psychiatrists. If CRHT teams are to be effective, they must be properly resourced and fully integrated into all aspects of acute mental health care. Otherwise provision of mental health services will continue to be patchy”.

Mr Bacon, a member of the Commons public accounts committee, was speaking as the National Audit Office published its report into the role of Crisis Resolution and Home Treatment (CRHT) services. CRHT teams help people though short-term mental health crises by providing intensive treatment and support outside hospital, preferably in their own homes.

However, there are wide variations between areas in the extent to which teams are staffed and resourced. The report also finds that CRHT teams are supposed to receive input from health and social care professionals, but almost a third of teams received no dedicated consultant psychiatrist input at all.

Additionally, an NAO survey found that CRHT staff had been involved in only 53 per cent of hospital admissions, and had had a bearing on the decision to admit in only 46 per cent, even though the government intended CRHT teams to ‘gatekeep’ all potential admissions to inpatient wards.

7 December 2007

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See also:
NAO REPORT: Helping people through mental health crisis

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