Leeds Survivor Led Crisis Service
Sanctuary and support in times of crisis
Mission Statement
Leeds Survivor Led Crisis Service offers high quality, person centred, radical and innovative services to people experiencing mental health crisis.
Aims
- To provide an alternative to statutory services within a homely environment.
- To provide services both for those in crisis, at the point of crisis and for those seeking to prevent the onset or escalation of crisis.
- To provide a place of sanctuaryat times of immediate crisis.
- To provide an holistic, non judgemental, non directive, empathic and respectful service to our visitors and callers.
- To work sensitively and appropriately with people at risk, people with complex needs and people who have been excluded from other services.
- To involve visitors and callers at all levels of the organisation and in all aspects of its development.
- To support individuals to recognise and develop their own strategies for crisis prevention and management and to address isolation and its associated problems.
- To provide a place where visitors can utilise their own experience to assist themselves and others through the sharing of problems, alternatives and solutions.
- To work in partnership with other service providers whilst maintaining confidentiality and our position as a radical, different and alternative service.
- To provide value for money, cost effective services of demonstrable and consistent quality.
- To provide strategically relevant services, meeting the outcomes outlined in our Service Level Agreements.
- To continuously review and develop our services to meet the changing needs of our visitors and callers.
- To provide a nurturing and supportive workplace, which demonstrates a valuing of staff (paid and voluntary) and supports their personal and professional development.
- To promote our service and its philosophy, disseminate our practice and share experience.
Philosophy
What we believe
- Each individual has their own experience of crisis. The causes and impact of crisis will be different for each person. We believe that people are expert in knowing their own situations and with the right kind of attention and support can find their own solutions.
People have told us that some of the characteristics of crisis are:
An overwhelming experience
More than the person can deal with
Not one’s normality
Usually intolerable
Highly stressful
Having nowhere to turn
Having exhausted all one’s coping strategies.
- Crisis is sometimes described as a time of change or a turning point in one’s life: a period of breakthrough or breakdown.
- Crisis can be a liberating or learning experience.
- People should have a range of choices for dealing with a crisis. Our services may be used as an alternative to statutory services, or may complement involvement in mainstream services.
- We believe that to deal with a crisis, a person must feel safe, listened to, and connected to other people.
- We want to know about the person, not the label they have been given.
- People in crisis are not essentially different from anyone else and everyone in his or her life will experience crisis at one time or another.
- We recognise that the city of Leeds is made up of many different groups, traditions and cultures. We respect and are responsive to the fact that social factors in a person’s life shape both their understanding of crisis, and their way of dealing with crisis. We also recognise that deprivation and oppression not only impact on people’s ability to cope with distress, but can be the cause of distress.
What we do
Leeds Survivor Led Crisis Service was set up in 1999 by a group of service users, who had campaigned for five years to develop the service. Initially, the service was run in partnership with Social Services, becoming a registered charity in 2001. The service was set up to be a place of sanctuary, which was an alternative to hospital admission and statutory services for people in acute mental health crisis.
The service was established, and continues to be governed and managed, by people with direct experience of mental health problems. We have our own unique perspectives on what it feels like to be in crisis and what helps and does not help. We have developed our service based on this knowledge and experience, while responding to the needs articulated by our visitors and callers.
The service is funded by the three Leeds NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups, Leeds City Council, the Leeds Personality Disorder Clinical Network and also receives small amounts of charitable trust funding, from time to time. We provide the following services:
Connect
Connect is a telephone helpline open 6-10.30 every night of the year. The service provides emotional support and information for people in distress. We receive around 5,000 calls a year. People can ring who are in crisis, anxious, depressed or lonely. They will be offered non judgemental and empathic support and information about other services, if requested. Connect supports people in crisis, as well as providing a preventative service, by supporting people before they reach crisis point. Connect also receives funding to provide emotional support to people who are carers.
Connect now offers online support to callers via our website. This provides an alternative to talking on the phone. Connect is staffed by volunteers who have gone through a comprehensive and rigorous training programme and receive ongoing supervision, training and support. Many of them have their own experiences of mental health problems. Each shift is supervised by a paid shift supervisor.
Dial House
Dial House is a place of sanctuary open 6pm-2am Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Visitors can access when they are in crisis. They can telephone to request a visit, or turn up at the door 6-10.30. Visitors can use the house as time out from a difficult situation or a home environment where they may feel unsafe or that may exacerbate their difficulties. Visitors can relax in a homely environment and can also gain one to one support from the team of Crisis Support Workers.
The team are qualified or qualifying counsellors, or receive training in the person centred approach. This is the primary therapeutic approach we use.
The key principles of this are:
- The person providing support demonstrates empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard towards the client
- A belief in the organism’s tendency to actualise – that is, a belief that people do the best they can in the circumstances they are in, with resources they have and have an inherent tendency to try to achieve their full potential
- The principle of non directivity. Work is led by the client, in the belief that they have the resources within themselves to find their own solutions.
We also draw on other therapeutic approaches, such as Solution Focused Brief Therapy. We provide a compassionate, respectful, empathic and consistent service, with the aim of supporting visitors to identify their own solutions to their difficulties.
At Dial House we have a family room, so parents in crisis can bring children with them. We also transport visitors to and from the house by taxi, to make their journey safe and comfortable.
Dial House is now accessible to Deaf people. We can provide access to the service via text instead of phone and have BSL trained support workers to support Deaf visitors to the service.
Dial House @ Touchstone
Dial House @ Touchstone is the Dial House service, provided 6pm-11pm on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, at the Touchstone Support Centre. The service provides crisis support to people from Black and Minority Ethnic Groups.
Dial House @ Touchstone is a partnership between Leeds Survivor Led Crisis Service and Touchstone. It brings together LSLCS’s expertise in providing crisis services and Touchstone’s in supporting people from BME groups.
Dial House @ Touchstone has received £500k in Lottery funding for five years. The project opened to new visitors on 1st October 2013. The service is staffed by a Manager, Senior Crisis Support Worker and three Crisis Support Workers who are all from BME groups.
The service provides a place of sanctuary, emotional support and information. The staff will work in Dial House @ Touchstone and Dial House. The aim is to provide a culturally specific service at Dial House @ Touchstone, but also to provide a bridge to Dial House and make this service more accessible.
Dial House @ Touchstone is available for anyone from a BME group, including Refugees and Asylum Seekers and similarly to Dial House, transport and childcare are provided.
Group Work
The service hosts a number of weekly groups. At Dial House, valuable peer support happens between visitors and the idea of the groups was to bring people together to share their expertise and experience in coping with crisis and to gain new ideas. This idea for group work came from visitors and they have been supported to develop their skills to the point where they now plan and facilitate the groups themselves, with only minimal support from a group support worker.
Peer Led Group Work
The Thursday ‘My Time’ group aims to provide social contact and support to people whose crisis is due to chronic isolation and loneliness. This runs on Thursday afternoons from 12-3pm. Visitors cook a meal together, socialise and support each other.
Also on Thursdays is a men’s group called ‘MANage’, set up to support men who experience times of crisis, and runs from 3.15-5.15pm. On Saturdays we run a Coping with Crisis group from 12-4pm. This is structured group work to help people learn more effective ways to deal with times of crisis and emotional distress.
Other Group Work
We run a Hearing Voices group on Tuesdays from 12-2pm. This is a facilitated support group for people who want to explore voice hearing and gain support around this issue. There is also a self harm group 11-1 on a Saturday, which is run jointly by LSLCS and Leeds Mind.
Awards
The organisation is proud to have won five prestigious national awards in the last seven years.
- December 2006;The Guardian Public Services award for Customer Service in the Innovation and Progress category.
- December 2007; The Guardian Public Services award for complex needs in the service delivery category.
- March 2008; accepted into the Community Care Excellence Network for Service User Involvement in Mental Health.
- September 2009; Charity Times ‘Charity of the Year’ Award
- March 2011; awarded the Charities Evaluation Service Learning and Innovation Prize 2011
Client Group
In all our services, we work with people in acute states of crisis. Many of our visitors are suicidal and/or self harm and we are skilled and experienced within these areas of work. Over the time we have been open, we have successfully worked with people who have been excluded from other services, or who other services have failed to engage. We also work with people who are survivors of trauma, particularly abuse.
Staffing
We value and nurture our staff, paid and voluntary, and see this is an essential aspect of providing a person centred service to clients. Staff are supported through supervision, training, away days and a reflective practice group. Each staff member also receives a well being budget to spend on counselling, external supervision or complementary therapies.
We provide a working environment which supports staff in their personal and professional development. This is evidenced by an impressive record of staff progression, with team members moving from voluntary or front line posts into management. We have a commitment to supporting and developing volunteers. Many of our volunteers move into paid work, here or elsewhere within the mental health field.
We are part of a network of mental health services in Leeds. We liaise with and undertake joint work with other services, while maintaining our identity as innovative, service user led voluntary sector services.
We are committed to disseminating our practice, through training, conference presentations, teaching and consultancy. This enables us to promote both the person centred approach to supporting people in crisis and the value of a survivor led organisation.
Dial House0113 260 9328 or text on 07922 249452
Dial House @ Touchstone0113 249 4675 or text on 07763 581853
Connect Helpline0808 800 1212 or online at
or email
March 2014