Crisis Resolution and Home Treatment Teams: 'Challenges and Pitfalls'

Note: The following is a checklist not a list to be read as an order of priorities

1. Practice Development:
   • Reviewing policies, protocols and team procedures
   • Supporting practitioners in developing their practice
   • Team-based supervision
   • Role of team development facilitation of away-days
   • Examining links with other parts of the service making service integration real
   • On going training needs identified with team
   • Clarifying the meaning of 'fidelity to the model' implementing the 'essential ingredients' for ensuring good practice (not that there is only one way of doing it!)
2. Staff retention & recruitment:
   • Ensuring staff maintain good practice
   • Motivation
   • Supporting staff morale
   • Providing appropriate leadership
   • Good induction & supportive supervision
3. Clarifying the main sources of stress:
   • Volume of workload
   • Interpersonal issues
   • Inter-team issues
   • Conflicting management directives
   • Sustaining the formal & informal support structures to manage the above
4. Time management:
   • A crucial asset that needs to be utilised wisely within the Team/Service
   • On-call activity aware of the potential for 'burn out' (N.B. You cannot become 'burned out' if you were not on fire in the first place)
5. Effective team-working:
   • Good effective communication (room to listen room to talk)
   • Identifying good team players
   • 'Everyone's contribution is valuable'
6. Workload:
   • Volume of referrals and re-referrals
   • Adjusting and adapting to the pace and unpredictability of the volume of work
7. Maintaining flexibility & creativity:
   • The ability to make a rapid response
   • Being consistent through a team approach particularly in response to handling referrals
8. Therapeutic risk-taking:
   • Risk assessment & evaluation
   • Risk management planning
   • Reasoned risk-taking decisions for positive gains
9. Keeping accurate team records & statistics on what you do:
   • A good reminder of all the positive work the team has delivered
   • Keeping accurate local Trust statistics
   • Aware of the statistical requirements of the Department of Health
10. Sustainability:
    • Keeping the momentum making the work interesting and challenging for staff
    • Sustaining the impact
11. Conflict management:
    • Creating a consensus within the team
    • Managing the inter-team difficulties & stereotypes
12. Promoting reflective practice:
    • Making better use of existing team meetings
    • Creating the priority reflecting on practice can enable more effective use of contact time
    • Supervision could support, encourage and enhance such reflection
13. Managing change:
    • Extending the remit when the time is appropriate (e.g. opening up to services for older people, learning difficulties)
    • Embracing positive changes for the service and team
    • Creating the time and space to consolidate or reflect on good practices
14. Forging good relationships with service user groups in the locality
15. Strategies for service development:
    • Overlap with other services (e.g. assertive outreach teams, early intervention service, in-patient services, drug & alcohol services, specialist personality disorder services)
    • Systemic approaches to thinking Trust-wide, looking at forging key linkages with other parts of the service

Kirt Hunte ~ Team Manager
[South Camden Crisis Response & Resolution Team]
July 2006