Save Leeds Crisis Centre

As you may have seen on Calendar News this evening, the government plan to stop funding for the Leeds Crisis Centre. Please help us to save Leeds’ only instant access crisis counselling service from closure. Other counselling and mental health services already have long waiting lists and will soon be cut too.

Around one in four people suffer from some form of mental illness, if you don't, I can assure you someone you know probably does. The Leeds Crisis Centre provides a free crisis counselling service 365 days of the year. We think of crisis as a recent change in a person’s ability to cope, often because of something stressful that has happened. Crisis can be seen as an opportunity for positive change. The service is for individuals experiencing a recent crisis, usually in the last few days or weeks. This will have resulted in a sudden and serious reduction in their ability to cope, and/or a significant deterioration in their mental health.

The service is used by well over 1000 people a year, 500 of whom are deemed too high a risk for any other service. 58% are women (including victims of domestic violence and rape). 22% are from black and minority ethnic communities. Leeds Crisis Centre employs two Black Minority Ethnic (BME) Group outreach workers, an Asian women’s worker who can offer counselling in Punjabi, Urdhu, as well as English, and a BME men’s worker. Nearly 10% of people using the Centre are from the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities. All age groups from teenagers 16 plus are represented; 10% of users are victims of crime.

46% of its referrals come from the NHS. 33% of referrals are from GPs, who are about to be given control of NHS budgets. This makes it all the more astonishing that the NHS PCT (the local health trust) has so far shown no interest in funding the service – a service which their own colleagues clearly rely upon.

The Centre uses the ‘CORE’ measuring tool, which all clients are invited to complete at the initial assessment appointment, and then again at their final counselling session, to measure the changes in the person’s level of distress. On average, clients of Leeds Crisis Centre experience a clinically significant reduction in distress over the time that they use our service: their level of distress more than halves.

More details of the service at: http://bit.ly/hgSn9U and of its impending closure as reported in the press at: http://bit.ly/gaxvJ5. The council’s proposals to close or cut a range of mental health and older people’s services are on the council website here: http://bit.ly/iboUAB. That document talks about duplication with other services, despite the Crisis Centre being the only instant access service staffed by qualified counsellors. NHS Improving Access to Psychological Services, mentioned as an alternative, mainly offer self-help material and brief CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) sessions for people referred by their NHS primary care mental health worker. CBT may not be appropriate for many people in crisis and could be a single session and the IAPT service cannot support people deemed ‘at risk’.

We are people who have used or value the Leeds Crisis Centre and don’t believe it should close. The council has done nothing to consult people use have used the service or to consider options other than closing it completely. Cuts may be inevitable, but they should be thought through, not arbitrary.

The campaign calls for three things:

1/ A full consultation with current and former service users and with GPs and others who refer people to the service.
2/ Consideration of cost-cutting measures (such as shrinking or moving the service) other than complete closure, which is all that is being considered at present.
3/ The local NHS Trust (PCT) to put funding into the service, which is used extensively by local GPs.

Please show your support by signing this petition. There is no doubt in my mind that without this service, people will die and families devastated. We need as many signitures as possible as the decision will be taken in the council meeting on Feb 11th.