Assertive Outreach Service (AOS)
27a St Owen Street
Hereford
HR1 2JB
Tel: 01432 265123
Fax: 01432 262407

Hours:
Team works flexibly across 7 days

Description:
AOS is separate from CMHT services and has the following posts;

1 Community Mental Health Nurse
2 Approved Social Workers
2 Support workers
Consultant Psychiatrist (1 day per week)

The AOS Team works flexibly with a small group of people with serious mental illness living in the community in any way that develops trust, maintains contact and promotes both mental and physical health. The range of potential interventions is wide, from encouraging compliance with medication, to facilitating access to "normal" community resources, to promoting a lifestyle that reduces risk to self and others. The time and place of contact with the team is defined primarily by the service user rather than by the service, as is the nature of that contact.

Referrals:
Via Community Mental Health Teams

More about Assertive Outreach:
Assertive Outreach, also known as 'active community treatment', is a form of intensive case management for the severely mentally ill who are 'difficult to engage' in more traditional services. It is a requirement under the National Service Framework for Mental Health that all Health Communities provide a specialist service to this group of often seriously ill people whose difficulties iinhibit their access to CMHT type services .

This is the "difficult to engage" group whose severe and multiple problems often result in them being passed around services without helpful engagaement with any. They may have a history of involvement with the courts and addiction problems in addition to a major mental illness. The AOS offers care and support to them in their homes or any other community setting, at times suited to them.

Aims:
The purpose of the service is primarily to engage with people with severe mental illness who do not wish to engage with mental health services. The Assertive Outreach service therefore aims to:

• meet needs of service users as defined by themselves

• minimise and control the symptoms psychotic illness

• prevent relapse into full blown illness

• prevent or reduce admission to psychiatric hospital

• use of mha

• improve quality of life

• address with service users issues of risk and safety

• work at times and in places acceptable to its service users