WIREDGOV

On World Homeless Day and World Mental Health Awareness Day, this blog from Sarah Assen, an Operational Manager for Homelessness Services in Manchester explains how Critical Time Intervention approaches can be used to improve services

Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust (GMMH) is a mental health provider of inpatient, specialist and community mental health services. Within one of our Homeless Mental Health Teams in the City of Manchester, we have been reviewing our service delivery processes and considering evidence-based models for engagement and support. One of the biggest challenges for our services which work with individuals who may present with co-occurring mental health, alcohol and drug support needs, is relationship and trust building at the point of first contact and the management of transitions and endings.

As part of our scoping of models, we found limited evidence of models currently in use for homeless health services in the UK. We came across the Critical Time Intervention Model (CTI) as a potential opportunity to address our unmet needs. CTI is "a time-limited evidence-based practice that mobilises support for society’s most vulnerable individuals during periods of transition. It facilitates community integration and continuity of care by ensuring that a person has enduring ties to their community and support systems during these critical periods".

In order to consider the implementation of CTI, we employed a Research Assistant to support with service evaluation implementing CTI within one of our teams. Additionally, we commissioned Homeless Link to provide CTI training to our clinical teams, Peer Mentors and identified key stakeholders. This training was held over two sessions, the first being an introduction into CTI, its principles and fidelity, the second for reporting, pathways and reviewing clinical case studies and phasing.

We were able to work collaboratively with Homeless Link and our clinical leads to develop a bespoke training package that was tailored for our service, this allowed us the opportunity to consider how CTI might be most effective within our service. In addition to this, we have set up a project team to implement this model and a reporting process to monitor its effectiveness.

The support from Homeless Link has been invaluable in enabling us to consider implementation of the model based on service need, whilst maintaining optimal fidelity. We are excited to build on the learning from our training, reviewing and adapting documentation and processes to ultimately implement CTI and review its impact on our services.