Important changes across North East London (NEL) are coming down the track to support service users, carers and the wider community from April 2024.
ELFT, along with North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT) and partners across NEL, are working together to ensure that service users experiencing mental health crises can access support via NHS 111, a freephone number that provides urgent health advice 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to people of all ages. From 2 April 2024, people living in the City of London, Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, Redbridge, Havering, and Barking and Dagenham will be able to call 111 and select option 2, putting them through to a fully trained and qualified mental health professional team based in ELFT’s crisis hub in Tower Hamlets.
The team has a wide range of skills, including on-the-phone brief psychological support and has access to key services and organisations that can offer mental health support to people in their time of need.
Local crisis lines currently in place across each local authority will still be running.
If service users are known to ELFT or NELFT services, they should continue to contact their service in the ways they had been doing so previously during working hours. Those wishing to contact a mental health professional outside of hours – or those who aren’t previously known to services – should contact 111 and select option 2.