Single Point of Access Service (Mental Health) - Isle of Wight

About the service

SPA is primarily an assessment team tasked with appropriate clinical risk triage to determine urgency of patient needs and safe assessment scheduling. An evidence based risk assessment triage tool (TAG) is used to prioritise assessments working collaboratively with callers to manage risk proactively.

Face to face structured assessments are provided exploring the nature of the problem or crisis, mental state examination, risk assessment and risk history, physical health, family, substance misuse, social history, employment, summary and plan.

Following assessment or telephone contact SPA will signpost or refer onto relevant agencies / services for support and intervention.

Onward referral to specialist secondary mental healthcare is provided by the SPA Service who work collaboratively with CMHS services in recognizing severe and enduring mental illnesses that require further monitoring, support and intervention.

Referral to primary care based help (IAPT) services or 3rd sector are also started from SPA involvement.

SPA conduct a weekly Consultant Psychiatrist review to provide medical oversight of risk and patient needs, medication advice and management is provided to GP's requesting prescribing guidance for patients with mental health problems that can be safely treated in primary care.

What we do

The SPA team conduct all crisis (within 12 hours), Urgent (within 72 hrs) and Non Urgent (within 28 days) assessments on the Isle of Wight. Their primary purpose is mental health clinical triage and face to face comprehensive assessments of mental health presentations.

SPA conduct structured risk assessments, comprehensive biopsychosocial assessments and identify treatment pathways for service users who will require specialist secondary care. The service also signposts to alternative help and provision if this is thought more appropriate to a person’s needs. This can include recommendations for self-referral to the primary care based Improving Access to Psychological Therapies Service (IAPT) or onward referral to social care and voluntary sector help.

Accessing the service

The SPA service is an open access team that will accept self referrals from the public, requests for crisis intervention from service users open to CMHS out of hours and requests for advice from partner agencies.

SPA is the sole referral point for all Isle of Wight GP's who phone all crisis and urgent mental health assessments through and will email routine requests for mental health assessment to the service.

SPA accept referrals from a broad range of statutory, non-statutory and third sector providers. These include local authority social services, probation services, housing providers, social care providers, police and ambulances services, third sector/voluntary organisations and other partner agencies.