C

CAIT is an organisation whose programmes are designed to deliver a full range of services to people who have been diagnosed with mental health illness with additional complications such as dual diagnosis or criminality as secondary issues.

Typically clients who receive services from a CAIT programme have been identified as hard to reach and have not benefitted from traditional approaches to providing treatment. Clients who receive CAIT services are those who have the most serious and intractable symptoms of mental illness and experience the greatest impairment in functioning. Impairments may include problems with basic, everyday activities such as:

• Keeping themselves safe
• caring for their basic physical needs
• maintaining safe and adequate housing;
• unemployment;
• substance misuse;
• homelessness
• Offenders within the criminal justice system as a result of their mental health illness.

Engagement with the CAIT services will produce significantly higher reductions in psychiatric hospitalisation; criminality; increased housing stability and improving client’s quality of life.

C

CAIT is a way of delivering a full range of services to people who have been diagnosed with a mental illness. CAIT’s goal is to give client’s adequate community care and to help them have a life that isn’t dominated by their mental illnesses.

With CAIT, clients get help taking care of their basic needs—taking medications, getting up, and getting through the day. CAIT teams work closely with clients to see which treatments work best for them.

How does CAIT work?

A team approach: Psychiatrists, nurses, mental health professionals, employment specialists, and substance-abuse specialists join together on CAIT

Services provided where they are needed: Consumers receive CAIT services in their homes, where they work, and in other settings in the community where problems occur or where support is needed.

Personalised care: CAIT teams work with relatively small numbers of people.

Time-unlimited support: CAIT teams give consumers whatever services and supports they need for as long as they need them.

Continuous care: Several CAIT team members work regularly with each consumer

Flexible care: CAIT teams fit their schedules around the needs of consumers.

Comprehensive care: CAIT teams provide an array of services to help meet consumer needs.

Services provided when they are needed: CAIT services are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Someone is always available to handle emergencies.

With CAIT, consumers benefit most because they are hospitalized less often and have more stable housing.