Aims and method Street triage services are now common but the population theyserve is poorly understood. We aimed to evaluate a local service to determinethe characteristics of those using it and their outcomes in the 90 day periodfollowing contact.Results We found that there were high levels of service use and that the vastmajority of contacts were via telephone rather than in person. Street triage was usedby both existing secondary mental health patients and non-patients. Follow-up rateswith secondary services were high in the former and low in the latter case.Implications Services are very busy where they exist and may be replacingtraditional crisis services. It is not apparent that they work to increase follow-upamong those using them, unless they are already in contact with services. In thisservice, although there was a joint response model nearly all responses wereprovided by telephone.
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