Talking Therapies Plus – making support more accessible

Our Talking Therapies Plus (TT+) service has now come to an end. Over its delivery period, TT+ provided flexible, community-based therapeutic support to adults experiencing anxiety, depression, trauma and bereavement – helping people get the right support at the right time, in a way that worked for them.

A Single Point of Access (SPA) handled referrals and triage, ensuring people were allocated quickly to an appropriate delivery partner or supported with onward signposting where another service was a better fit. Sessions were delivered face-to-face in community settings, by phone, and online/video (with home visits where required), reducing barriers linked to anxiety, disability, transport, caring responsibilities and language.

Key achievements

• High demand and strong take-up: TT+ received1,058 referrals and supported 824 people to enter treatment
• Joined-up access through the SPA: a consistent triage process helped people reach the right support first time, and supported onward referrals/signposting where appropriate.
• Timely therapeutic support: the average wait from referral to first session was 38 calendar days (but in many cases was much sooner).
•  Therapy delivered in ways people could actually use: phone, online/video and community-based face-to-face sessions (including home visits where needed) enabled engagement for people who would otherwise struggle to attend appointments.
• Reaching people excluded from statutory routes: TT+ proactively engaged excluded communities including people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups, migrants and Eastern European communities, and people requiring interpreter/language support – groups known to be under-represented in NHS Talking Therapies.
• Improved mental health for people completing support: where paired outcome scores were recorded, participants showed significant meaningful improvement in anxiety (GAD-7) and depression (PHQ-9), with many moving out of severe clinical ranges by discharge.
• People told us it made a difference: 98.5% felt listened to and understood; 98.5% were satisfied with the service; and 97.4% said it made a positive difference to them.

TT+ shows what is possible when therapeutic support is designed around accessibility and real-life barriers. For many residents, it provided a route into support that reduced isolation, improved wellbeing, and helped people regain stability and coping strategies. We’re grateful to all delivery partners and referrers who made the programme possible, and we will continue to share learning from TT+ to inform future service design and commissioning. See our final article at the bottom of the newsletter which focuses more on TT+ and how our providers went above and beyond. And thank you to our funder, Black Country Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust without whom this would not have been possible.