Publish date: 9 September 2024

We’ve changed the way mental health emergency and urgent referrals are received from GPs in St Helens, Knowsley, Warrington and Halton. In the event of a very urgent referral (up to four hours), urgent referral (up to 24 hours), or urgent response (up to 72 hours), please contact our First Response Service on 0800 051 1508 and press option 1. The team will log referral information and transfer to the most appropriate person for action.

As part of national transformation to reduce and simplify points of access into mental health services, emergency and urgent referrals will not be accepted in paper format to former email addresses/teams. 

Non urgent referrals can be made by completing a bio-psychosocial referral form and emailing:

GPs or primary care network ARRS mental health practitioners can refer for non-urgent secondary care assessments and formulation and intervention offers. This is to support achievements of service users’ personal goals, where attempts to support them in primary care are not appropriate or have been unsuccessful. Referrers will be informed of outcome/actions from the multidisciplinary team and subsequent routine assessment. 

Primary care network colleagues are available to support GPs with criteria for referrals to make sure they reach the appropriate team and ensure correct response times are achieved.