Support

We passionately believe that a live worth living is built in the client's local community.  All of the NICE guidelines' personal accounts talk of people going to various placements only to relapse when they return to home.  Our interventions are aimed at people with significant levels of self harm and perceived high risk of suicide and prioritise doing things via negotiation and consent while avoiding coercion and control.

Placement Avoidance

The core of our work is based on relational practice, giving those we work with a palpable experience of practitioners who listen, are reliable and do what they say they will.  Our work is informed by the range of therapies we have trained in and experienced, including DBT, SCM, Therapeutic Communities, Group, Individual, Occupational and Integrative Therapy.  This supports individuals to reduce potentially lethal ways of managing distress, build a life worth living while maintaining an effective therapeutic relationship in-line with NICE guidance. Our intensive intervention offers a period of assessment where we collaboratively agree the presenting difficulties and support needs of the individual. Our typical contact consists of 2 sessions per week and extended hours phone coaching. Within this we support people to use services around them effectively, whilst also supporting systems to respond in ways that are most helpful.  This often means we provide the majority of the therapeutic contact to the individual while working closely with other agencies to support them and share our ways of working. 

We have experience of working effectively with many people detained under the MHA for prolonged periods where systems believed that compulsory out of area therapy was the only option. We’ve also worked with informal patients and people in the community who were seen as chaotic and difficult to help.  We are told we provide greater understanding and therapeutic intervention to both patient and system.

In addition we have successfully transitioned people from secure units to the community where there were strong views that compulsory detention was the only feasible option. Our blend of lived and traditional experience means we are keenly aware of the effects of iatrogenic harm - where systems strive to keep patients safe while maintaining/exacerbating the problems of the individual.  We work intensively with teams and clients to minimise these dynamics.

We aim to work with people for a year and collaborate closely with them and their MDT to plan our ending.