The pathway of services will also include a new Primary Care Men’s Mental Health Treatment Requirement Service. This will for the first time in London, provide Probation with a greater range of community order options.
This contract is being delivered by North London Forensic Collaborative for North London, South London Mental Health and Community Partnership for South London and Waythrough, a UK registered charity, who provide a pan-London Community Link Worker Service.
Waythrough provide the community Liaison and Diversion function for vulnerable people. They work closely with custody, court and Community Sentence Treatment Requirements (CSTR) teams.
The new Liaison and Diversion service provides a specialist mental health assessment for people of all ages, genders and vulnerabilities (mental health and psychosocial concerns, neurodiverse conditions, substance misuse), designed to intervene at the earliest opportunity when a person comes into contact with the criminal justice system. This typically begins at the point of police contact, where people are identified for any potential vulnerabilities. The service model follows four stages: case identification, screening, assessment and onward referral.
Men's Mental Health Treatment Requirements have been commissioned with the Liaison and Diversion service, recognising the links between mental health difficulties and many types of offending and risk, to provide a pathway to further treatment and recovery. This service offers an alternative to a custodial sentence, with pre-sentence assessment and court ordered mental health treatment as part of a community sentence. Men's Mental Health Treatment Requirements includes a range of psychological interventions such as psychoeducation, emotional skill development, cognitive behaviour therapy, and all interventions are trauma informed, co-produced and individualised.
If you have any local queries, you can contact elft.liaison-diversion@nhs.net. NHS England also provides contact details for Liaison and Diversion across the country: NHS Commissioning >> Regional Contacts.