Rapid Intervention and Treatment Team

The Rapid Intervention and Treatment Team (RITT) is a specialist older adult mental health multidisciplinary community based service with the following key functions.

• Single Point of Access (SPoA) for all older adult mental health services.
• A gatekeeping function where an admission is being considered, to assess the potential for diversion from admission and for treatment and management at place of residence.
• Intensive home treatment focus on older adults with functional or organic presentations who present in crisis or with a challenging behaviour to prevent hospitalisation or a breakdown in their current residence.
• Service Users experiencing an episode of illness associated with a severe mental disorder, a complex mental disorder or severe psychological disturbance where short term intervention is indicated.
• Care home liaison function - scheduled care
• Crisis/home treatment function - unscheduled care
• Discharge liaison to the in-patients unit, to support an outcome focused approach to the patient journey, identifying opportunities for early discharge and management and treatment at home, provide a liaison link between ward and community, and support timely discharge planning processes.

How to access the service

Referrals will be screened by Single Point of Access (SPoA) for eligibility, risk and priority of need. Referrals with risk indicators will be triaged and / or assessed and allocated to the appropriate care team.

The team will accept referrals from:

• GPs, and other primary care health professionals.
• Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH).
• Talking Therapies services for referrals requiring assessment outside the remit of Talking Therapies.
• Community restart team.
• Carer or patient’s relative, if appropriate for assessment team (out of normal working hours).
• Self-referral, if appropriate for assessment team (out of normal working hours).

Internal referrals will be accepted from community mental health teams, memory assessment service, mental health inpatients, hospital liaison teams and home treatment teams.