NHS Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Talking Therapies Self-Referral Information
Please click the link above to self-refer online into the service.
Following your self-referral to us, if you provide us with consent to e-mail you and have a Hotmail, Live or Outlook e-mail account, please regularly check your spam / junk folders for any communications from us.
We apologise in advance for any delays that may be experienced processing referrals and offering assessments or treatment, which may take several weeks. Please let us know if you are front-line health or social care staff on your self-referral (in free-text area).
Missed Appointments Policy
Whilst we understand many factors can present barriers to attending you appointments, our policy is to discharge patients who repeatedly cancel or do not attend appointments:
- Patients who do not attend their assessment appointments will be discharged from the service as we will assume you are feeling better and no longer require access to our service.
- Patients who do not attend a treatment appointment will be offered only one further opportunity to attend and discharged at the second missed appointment.
- Patients who miss two treatment appointments, including short notice cancellations over the course of therapy, will be discharged back to their GP.
We estimate about 27,000 appointments are missed each year. Each missed appointment costs an average £63, which is about £1.7 million per year to your NHS.
In addition, missed appointments add about a two-week extra waiting time for low-intensity treatment and between six to eight weeks' extra waiting time for high-intensity treatment, which we know is distressing for patients. Our own research also shows that patients who attend all appointments have significantly improved outcomes. For example, 11% more of patients who attend all sessions achieved recovery criteria compared to those who missed one or more sessions.
Email Consent Form
What happens after you self-refer?
Once you have referred to our service, you will receive an automated e-mail to let you know we have received your referral and are dealing with it. Please check your junk e-mail folder if you do not receive this.
If the problems you describe in your referral information are something we might be able to help you with in NHS Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Talking Therapies, we will offer you an initial suitability assessment. This will be with a Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner (PWP) and usually takes place over the phone and lasts for about 30 minutes. The purpose of this is to ask you some more questions to confirm we are the best service to offer you treatment or, if not, provide you with information and guidance regarding other services and how to access them.
The initial suitability assessment is not intended to be a full clinical assessment of your difficulties; this will be undertaken with your assigned therapist, once you have reached the top of the waiting list for treatment.
If when we receive your referral form we believe that what you have described means we are not the best service to meet your current needs, we will aim to signpost you to an appropriate service, or refer you back to your GP for a review.
We aim, where possible, to have completed your initial suitability assessment (if relevant) within six weeks of your self-referral to the service. Depending on demand when you self refer, though, it can be quicker, or take longer.