This report was published in 2007, by the Victorian Government , Department of Human Services, Melbourne, Australia. It reviews the functioning of intensive home treatment teams in the State of Victoria and raises some important issues. As I describe in my book on home treatment, there is some ambiguity regarding how teams should respond to crises and what their role is. The demand for gatekeeping can sometimes be interpreted as requiring the teams to see all crises quickly, which then evolves into others perceiving them as ” crisis services”. However, their primary function is to provide an alternative to hospitalization-and as this report suggests, the demand for urgent crisis assessment, interferes with the performance of this function. This report floats the suggestion of removing the word ” crisis” from these teams names-and insisting on the specifically designed crisis services–in ER’s for example provide the crisis assessment role
A review of crisis assessment and treatment (CAT) services and functions