Important information about your assessment appointment

Welcome to Croydon NHS Talking Therapies. You are booking an assessment appointment with us. We want you to know more about what this appointment means and what to expect.

When booking your first appointment:

Your first appointment is for an assessment and will be facilitated via a video call over Microsoft Teams. The appointment will be for 50 minutes, and you will need to be in a quiet, comfortable place where you can speak openly and confidentially over the video call. Ideally, this will be at home or another private place where you will not be distracted or disturbed.

All subsequent appointments will be held weekly via teams at the same time and on the same day as your first appointment. For example, if your first appointment is on a Tuesday at 11am, all subsequent appointments will be on a Tuesday at 11am. It is important that you only book an appointment time and day that you are available for each week.

Prior to the first appointment:

The link for the appointment via Microsoft Teams will be sent to you by your therapist at least 24 hours before the appointment. If you have given us permission, we will send you a text reminder with the appointment details the day before the appointment.

We will also send you an email with a link to some questionnaires. These questionnaires ask about how you have been feeling recently and about how your problems are affecting your life. Please check your junk email folder as sometimes the email can be found there. If we offer further sessions with our service, you will be asked to complete these questionnaires every week. This is essential so that we can keep track of how you are feeling and to make sure that what we are doing in therapy is helpful.

Rearranging your first appointment:

Due to high demand for the service and the need to minimise waiting times for everyone, Croydon NHS Talking Therapies operates a strict attendance policy. If you miss your first assessment appointment and you do not contact us before the appointment, we have to assume that you have changed your mind about therapy, or that it is not the right the time for you. We will try and call you but will discharge you from the service if we are unable to reach you at the time of the appointment.

If you need to cancel and re-arrange your first assessment session, please email us on croydonnhstalkingtherapies@slam.nhs.uk. We will offer you one more appointment to take part in an assessment. If you cancel the second appointment offered for an assessment, we will not be able to re-schedule the assessment and we will need to discharge you from the service. You will then need to re-refer yourself if you are ready and able to attend weekly sessions.

During your first appointment:

Your therapist will guide you through the first appointment by asking various questions in order to find out more about you and the support that you need. All you need to do is answer in the best way you can. Some of these questions will be about your feelings, your safety and the safety of others. We know this might be hard and you may not be used to discussing this information. That’s OK, your therapist will support you through it as best they can.

The information you give during the appointment is confidential within the NHS. That means it is not disclosed outside of the NHS (including your GP) unless we have your permission. However, we need to make you aware that there are situations when we may have to break this confidentiality agreement due to our duty of care to you and the public. These instances are when you, or your children, are at risk of serious harm, in cases of threats to other’s or children’s safety, when a historic or current potential crime is identified or there is a threat of terrorism. Then we may be required to inform other authorities.

At the end of the first appointment, we will discuss with you what help may best meet your needs. The main treatment offered within our service is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), but other high intensity therapy options may be available. Please note that as this appointment is for an assessment only, it may be that alternative options for support are suggested to you, including those offered outside of our service. We will inform you and your GP (or any other professional who referred you) if we suggest treatment outside of our service.

Subsequent appointments:

If following this first assessment appointment it is agreed that CBT or another high intensity therapy is appropriate for you, you will have approximately six weekly sessions that will aim to help you to understand what is keeping your current difficulties going, before learning techniques to manage them more helpfully. After this point, the need for further sessions will be reviewed. Please see below for more information about CBT.

If you have any questions about your first appointment, please contact us by email at Croydonnhstalkingtherapies@slam.nhs.uk.

Urgent help

Croydon NHS Talking Therapies is not a crisis service. For urgent help such as feeling at risk of hurting yourself or others, please contact your GP for an emergency appointment or SLaM Mental Health Support 24-hour helpline on 0800 731 2864. You can also present at your local A & E at Croydon University Hospital.

Other crisis services you can use: Samaritans 24 hour helpline on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org , Solidarity in A Crisis (freephone) on 03001231922, or The Listening Place which is a service run by volunteers supported and supervised by mental health professionals.