This innovative service will offer a crisis response and intensive, specialist care in the home environment, ensuring that young people receive the right support at the right time, while remaining in familiar surroundings with their families.
Coast (Crisis Outreach Acute Support Team) has been developed by Sussex Partnership Foundation NHS Trust (SPFT) and the Hampshire and Isle of Wight, Sussex, Kent & Medway Provider Collaborative in partnership with NHS Sussex.
The development of Coast has been co-produced with Experts by Experience (EBEs) who have also recorded a podcast mini-series which outlines lived experiences of accessing inpatient and acute care within CAMHS. The feedback has been integral to shaping the new model and the young people involved have continued to form part of the project group, recruitment processes for new staff and part of the ongoing service governance via consultation in the new monthly COAST Participation Forum.
One EBE, Dulcie, said: “I feel really positive about this new service because it addresses the gap that can often appear in between community and inpatient treatment. If this was offered to me it would have helped me enormously to maybe avoid hospital or even just better my transition back to the community."
Zoe, who features in the podcast and is part of the project, said: "I think this service is going to have a positive impact on young people in Sussex by hopefully reducing the amount of admissions, which will be beneficial for the young people.
“For me some of my experiences were difficult to deal with and didn’t always impact me in a positive way but that was the only option at that time. I think if I had had this service, I would have been able to avoid some of my admissions -sometimes hospital isn't the best option for a young person."
The service, launched in April 2025, introduces a new way of working with a joined-up approach to the current home treatment team and urgent help service. There is an overarching multi-disciplinary team offering an enhanced crisis and intensive treatment service to support very unwell young people who might otherwise need to be admitted to hospital. An integral part of intensive home treatment includes education provided by the Alternative Provision College (West Sussex County Council) either in the home or online options as appropriate.
Max Read, CAMHS Acute & ED Nurse Consultant, said: "Coast will provide the intensive, multidisciplinary support that some young people need for a period of time, but without requiring to be placed in a hospital environment, which can feel really hard."
COAST interventions will be delivered at home - in the community, clinic and/or telephone-based services for young people and their families. Community-based intensive treatment programmes like Coast offer cost savings compared to inpatient services and can provide timely treatment to young people, in or closer to their homes and communities.
