Skip to content

Attendance Policy

About our Attendance Policy

As a primary care talking therapies service your commitment to attending regular sessions is essential, and timing of treatment is important. Treatment sessions are usually weekly at the same day/time; please ensure that you can prioritise your treatment. This policy helps us to manage waiting times and ensures you get the most out of your treatment. This is important as unplanned gaps in treatment may mean you do not get the most out of your therapy.

As a busy mental health service, we need to be booked to capacity to ensure waiting times are kept to a minimum. To ensure people are seen as soon as possible we need to manage attendance and therefore if you miss an appointment without notifying us or having made a prior agreement with your therapist your ongoing treatment may be affected.

  • If you cannot attend an appointment for any reason, please email [email protected] or call us on 01924 234 860 as soon as you can. Our phone line is staffed 8:00am - 20:00pm Monday to Thursday, Fridays 8:00am - 16:00pm, Saturdays 9:00am - 16:00pm and on Sundays, 10:00am - 16:00pm.

Screening Assessment

  • If you do not attend your first screening assessment and do not ring to cancel you will be discharged. This will not affect you referring into the service again, in the future, when you are more able to engage.
  • If you are unable to complete the booked assessment at that time we call you however still wish to engage with an with an assessment then you will be either booked into a new assessment slot if there is availability or be moved back to the waiting list for an available appointment.
  • If you cancel in advance of your assessment you will be rebooked into a new assessment slot or placed back onto the waiting list until one becomes available.
  • If you cancel three assessments you will be discharged from the service and you will need to re-refer when you are more able to engage in the assessment process.

Treatment

  • If you are unable to attend an ongoing treatment appointment ( due to illness, injury, dependency, etc.), please contact us to discuss your options as soon as you know you are unable to attend.
  • If you need to rearrange your appointment, please provide us with as much notice as possible so that your appointment can be reallocated for someone else. We require at least 48 hours’ notice.
  • If you do not attend an ongoing treatment appointment without prior cancellation, and do not contact us within 48 hours of the arranged appointment date/time, we will send you a 7 day opt in letter/email. If you then contact us within this time you will be booked back in to your original appointment time/date. If you were to opt in after a week your original appointment time/date may no longer be available and you will therefore be placed back on the waiting list for the next available therapist/appointment.
  • If you do not attend 2 appointments without prior cancellation/notice or if you cancel more than 3 appointments throughout your treatment, we will discharge you from the service.
  • If you are discharged for non-attendance, you will be able to rerefer back in the future, but we would encourage you to consider the timing of the therapy and perhaps to return when you are sure you can commit to a full course of treatment. If there has been a series of closed episodes due to non-attendance we may need to consider suitability for our service and what has changed from previous episodes.

What if my therapist is off sick or cancels?

We will always aim to give you as much notice of a cancellation as possible, our preference is to contact you by telephone to discuss this, however if we cannot reach you we may send an email or leave a voice message.

  • If the cancellation is an assessment or first treatment we will always look to rebook you into the next available slot which may be with another therapist.
  • If the cancellation is mid treatment, we will discuss with you if it is better to wait until your therapist returns or reallocate you to a new therapist to continue your treatment.
  • If the therapist’s absence is prolonged or long-term we will look to reallocate you to a new therapist. This would be by a therapist trained in the same treatment modality as your current therapist.
  • Please be aware that we may not always be able to reallocate you to a new therapist instantly. Therapists' diaries are booked to capacity so we would book you into the soonest available slot or remain with your therapist – whichever comes first.

We understand that the above steps are not ideal when there has been a disruption to your appointments and apologise sincerely if this happens. However, in our experience it is more beneficial to re-commence your therapy as soon as possible, than to wait for your current therapist to return if they are on prolonged absence. We would always consider the impact of any break in treatment and assure you that we will do everything in our control to be able to commence your support as soon as possible.