2 December 2021

From the 1 of December Warrington Recovery Team will be receiving routine referrals directly.  Consequently, from this date routine assessments will no longer be assessed by the Crisis Division before then being referred to the Warrington Recovery Team. These operational changes will help services in Warrington to bridge the gap between primary and secondary care and enable people who need secondary care input to access their care and treatment easier. The Recovery Team will be supported by the new Primary Care Mental Health Team to help them to safely dealing with these routine referrals. The information below provides more detailed referral information.

Routine referrals using the same biopsychosocial referral form will be referred electronically to the PCN/Recovery Team MDT via mcn-tr.recovery-pcnreferrals@nhs.net. These will be discussed in the MDT and if appropriate will be offered an assessment within 28 days by either the PCN Team or Recovery Team. All external referrals which are not appropriate to wait for up to 28 days and require a more urgent response, should be referred to the Crisis Division in accordance with their operating procedure.

Internal routine referrals to the Recovery Team ie. from an inpatient ward or CAMHS, should be made using mcn-tr.recovery-pcnreferrals@nhs.net also. The MDT will then decide which service is best placed to meet the needs of the individual being referred.

To reduce risk, the Crisis Division NHS.net account will remain functional but they will send all routine referrals from their address to mcn-tr.recovery-pcnreferrals@nhs.net.

A big thank you to the Crisis Division leadership team and practitioners for continuing to provide routine assessments during what was a very difficult time. Also a big thank you to the Warrington Recovery and Leadership Teams for helping us find an alternative pathway for routine assessments.

We will be evaluating the impact of this new approach to routine assessments on service demand and service user experience. What we hope is that this initiative will be both helpful to  the service user as it reduces barriers to care whilst also giving the Recovery Team more control over the assessment process.

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