Recovery Team

Our service is for adults with long-term mental health needs that would be best met by secondary mental health services. This includes people with mental health problems like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and severe depression.

Make an appointment to see your GP. He or she will be happy to work with you to help you to manage mild to moderate symptoms of mental ill-health outside of secondary services. 

It might be that you do need more specialised support. If so, your GP can make a referral to your local assessment team on your behalf, who will assess your mental health needs and will be able to refer you onto us if they think we can help. 

When you first join our service, you will be assessed by a member of staff from the Recovery Team. After this assessment, we will work with you to put together a care plan.

Your care plan may include one single type of treatment, for example cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) or it may include a number of different types of treatments. This may change over time but it will be explained to you and you should always be involved in making any decisions about your care. 

You will have the chance to complete a recovery plan, either on your own or with a member of staff. The recovery plan explores the mental health experiences you have. It builds on your strengths and skills and helps you to develop new ones with the aim of improving your quality of life and your ability to live your life well.

We also have Recovery Teams in Halton, St Helens and Warrington.

Patient Reported Outcome Measures - Adult Community Mental Health Services

We ask everyone who is referred to our service to fill in short questionnaires (known as Patient Reported Outcome Measures or PROMs for short). These help us to plan your care and agree goals to work on.

Why we use these tools?

• To help us understand what is going on in your life and how you feel so we can plan your care together around what really matters to you
• To make sure you are able to play an active part in making decisions about your care
• To help us understand if what we are doing is working or needs to change
• To help us understand what works best and develop our services for the future.

How will it work?

• You might be asked to fill these in on paper, in the session, or online
• You will be asked to fill them in at different points in time to see how you are doing
• Your answers will be looked at by your key worker and may be discussed in your appointments.

What if I need help filling them in?

• You can ask someone you trust like a family member, friend or advocate to help you fill these in. You can also ask your key worker for help. It is important that you answer the questions as best you can, not the person helping you
• If you need the questionnaire in a different format or language, please speak to your key worker.

Do I have to fill them in?

• No, you do not have to fill these in, but we hope you will so we can better understand your needs
• If you choose not to, you will still be able to receive care and support from our services
• If you want to opt out, speak to your key worker.

How will my information be used?

• Your key worker and other team members will use the answers you give to plan and review your care
• Your information may also be shared with any services that we agree together, for example as part of a referral to another service
• Your answers will be held securely as part of your Mersey Care health record
• We also use information like this, once anonymised (your personal information removed), to help us understand how our services are doing
• The anonymised information can also be shared externally as part of NHS datasets
• All data sharing is managed in line with policies for handling private and sensitive data. For more information please see the Patient Privacy Notice.