The Crisis House Project:

We are involved in an innovative partnership between local service users, East Surrey Primary Care Trust, East Elmbridge and Mid Surrey Primary Care Trust and Surrey Oaklands NHS Trust providing support for adults during a crisis.

The model comprises of two user – led crisis houses, one in Redhill an one in Epsom, and a crisis telephone support line. All are open 24 houses a day 365 days of the year. The service is guided by principles set in a feasibility study for local crisis services that was undertaken by local service users.

Definitions of crisis they found useful include:

“A place of safety and sanctuary for people with mental health problems who are in crisis, where the emphasis is on the nature of the crisis and how it can be addressed, rather than a person’s illness.”

“An holistic approach that can embrace psychological, social and biological issues, related to mental distress…  Thus promoting [a model] that focus[es] on individual abilities and strengths, rather than their pathology”.

A mental health crisis is “the moment when the normal activities of your day-to-day breakdown”.

There are a number of key features that make this exciting model unique, these are:

• Being user- led, which means the "who" and "how" and "when" people use the houses will be defined as much by service users as mental health staff. 

• The houses will be managed and guided by a Partnership Board comprising at least 51% service users as well as senior management and key staff to ensure the service reflects and responds to local service users’ needs .

• The houses are intended to offer an alternative to hospital and other crisis services – in particular non clinical and holistic in approach – but crucially are not intended to be instead of acute care.

• The emphasis is on principles of self-responsibility, independence, autonomy, recovery, non-coercion and minimal restriction.  Therefore the houses offer support aimed at enabling individuals to retain or regain control over their lives, and embrace the choices available.