Please note that Professor Tim Kendall, National Clinical Director for Mental Health, has asked Mental Health Trusts to review their models of care for service users experiencing cyclical and regular crises including, where adopted, SIM. The outcome of these reviews will be considered by NHS England in the Autumn. A link to the AHSN Network’s responses (submitted in July 2021 and September 2021) to a Freedom of Information request on SIM is here: https://www.ahsnnetwork.com/freedom-of-information-foi-requests
Serenity Integrated Mentoring (SIM) is an innovative mental health workforce model that brings together the police and community mental health services in order to better support people with complex mental health needs.
Across the UK, emergency and healthcare services respond to people in mental health crisis. For a small number of service users, crisis behaviours become cyclical and regular, placing an intensive operational demand on police, ambulance, Emergency Departments (ED), and mental health teams.
SIM trains a police officer passionate about mental health in high intensity behaviour, risk management, and basic clinical theory. The officer is then based within their local Community Mental Health Team (CMHT) to assist with the clinical and risk management of the most challenging cases.
Over time this multi-dimensional team combine clinical, risk and behavioural management skills to work with service users to develop a personalised package of care. Predicting and preventing high intensity calls by encouraging the service user towards more consistent and healthy coping strategies. Focusing on the complex factors driving their crisis and providing opportunities to break this cycle offers significant benefits to the individual, their families, and their communities, as well as a reduction in section 136s and associated costs.
In April 2018, SIM was selected as of one of seven programmes for national adoption and spread across the AHSN Network during 2018 - 2020. Wessex AHSN supported the spread and adoption of SIM across the country.
The Health Innovation Network (the Academic Health Science Network for south London) has supported the Metropolitan Police and 4 Mental Health Trusts to implement SIM. To find out more about their experience please click here.
