The FIND Community Team is delivered on behalf of the SLP’s Forensic Programme by Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust’s Forensic Directorate in partnership with specialist learning disability and forensic community teams across all of south London’s three NHS mental health Trusts.

FIND extends the community mental health care offer to those presenting with both forensic and neurodevelopmental needs that might otherwise have been excluded from forensic-only and LD-only community mental health teams. The team works in partnership with existing forensic-only, LD-only, and mainstream (generic) community mental health teams to anticipate, reduce and respond to behaviours that can present a risk to the public and/or challenge services. This provision takes the form of training, consultation and advice, and joint working with existing mental health community teams to assess and intervene with this population. The team also works with people with learning disability (LD) and/or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who are nearing discharge from secure inpatient services to help plan and support community provision and promote safe and successful community re-integration.

Team aims and objectives:

1. Reduce the number of people with LD and/or ASD in inpatient facilities by accelerating discharge for those in hospital and reducing the risk of admission for those in the community.
2. Reduce harmful behaviours by people in this cohort that might lead to contact with criminal justice services or admission to inpatient psychiatric settings.
3. Improve support to people in this cohort who are already in contact with the criminal justice system.

Service model and summary of care interventions offered by the team.

The FIND Community Team adheres to the Standards for Community Mental Health Services (Forensic CCQI: Quality Network for Forensic Mental Health Services; April 2013) and the Transforming Care Model Service specifications: Community-based forensic support:

1. a team of multi-disciplinary clinicians who have expertise in the assessment, treatment and management of individuals with complex mental health and social needs, who have and/or continue to present a significant risk of serious harm to others.
managing risk primarily through relational risk awareness: clinicians can balance the serious
2. risk history and knowledge of the individual as an offender with identifying the strengths and vulnerabilities to ensure risk management and recovery objectives are held in parallel.
3. offering a tiered approach to care: collaborating with mental health teams, working with service users who present with complex mental health and risk issues.
4. providing an interface between secure hospital care and community mental health services.
5. adhering to recommendations about caseload size for care coordinators and responsible clinicians.

The service is developed to enhance the service provision across south London for service users with LD and/or ASD and forensic needs. The service adopts a network approach working with the local health teams, and other agencies to support service users to live safely in the community. The team recognise the need for multi-agency collaboration to ensure service users’ holistic needs are met and risk is effectively managed.

Care is provided in accordance with service user need and assessed risk. A tiered model allows flexibility in terms of service users being managed in the least restrictive setting, whilst empowering existing mental health services to become collaboratively involved in the clinical management of this clinical group.