Recording community based crisis care: How should community-based crisis care activity be recorded and improved?

Every area now has 24/7 open access crisis lines for people of all ages accessible via NHS 111 ‘select mental health option’. Support can be accessed via phone and from April 2025 via text.

All activity for crisis services accessible via NHS 111 ‘select mental health option’ should be reported against the 24/7 Crisis Response Line team type when submitting to the MHSDS.

In some areas the crisis line support may be provided as part of what’s referred to locally as a Single Point of Access service. Where this is the case only the activity coming through the NHS 111 ‘select mental health option’ should be recorded against the 24/7 crisis line team type. All other activity should be recorded against the Single Point of Access team type.

Ideally, all crisis line providers should open a referral for every incoming call particularly when callers disclose personal information. This ensures that individuals needs are appropriately recorded and followed up if necessary supporting continuity of care and enabling a more accurate understanding of demand. Such practices also align with broader national efforts to standardise data collection and improve service delivery across crisis line providers.

There are also a range of crisis alternative services that generally have service models that enable patients to engage with no appointment and have more informal care models than traditional community mental health services.

Recording interactions with patients in crisis via the minimum requirements of referral data in the MHSDS provides the most effective oversight of the activity of a service and is therefore the ideal approach. Identifiable patient level data enables analysis of the broader pathway and issues such as inequality. Guidance on the approach to using referral based data collection for these services is in section 5.B..

However, it is recognised that in many places with current data systems, it is not proportional or possible to open referrals for simple, quick calls with patients some of whom may remain anonymous. Where that is the case services should record data in line with the requirements for the drop in contact table, with guidance on this approach set out in the section below.

Note that a submission to the MHSDS cannot be made if it only contains data in the drop in contact table. At least one referral must be present in the submission to pass the validations. For any providers for which this causes issues please contact the NHSE adult mental health team at [email protected]

The crisis text service providers, such as Mental health Innovations / SHOUT, are among the organisations that do not have referrals to submit alongside the activity recorded via the drop in contact table. They are complying with the national data submission requirements by sharing activity metrics direct with NHSE, which will be shared with the wider system via the FutureNHS pages on the Crisis Text Support(requires NHS Futures account to login).