The organization and distribution of services among team members are designed to optimize the care offered to each client, in accordance with the client’s pre-established intervention plan. Each team member contributes his or her specific training to the clients and to the team. Priorities are determined by the team during morning meetings, and work is distributed according to the expertise and availability of each one, taking into account their relationship with the client. All of the team members’ activities with or on behalf of a client aim to fulfill the intervention plan that was developed with and for that client.

(See the Guide de pratique, pages 16-18).

• Psychiatric, psychosocial rehabilitation and support services, in the client's own living environment;
• Crisis intervention, 24 hours a day seven days a week, in order to mitigate or prevent crises, psychotic breaks and re-hospitalizations;
• Support in taking medications through home visits. Support also includes teaching about medication, its benefits as well as its side effects, and about illness and its symptoms;
• Development of a support network: friends, family, neighbours, and community resources;
• Accompanying the client in fulfilling their basic needs for daily living and physical health;
• Support with regards to housing, nutrition, budgeting, and personal hygiene needs;
• Accompanying the client to ensure access to leisure, defending the client's rights, and integration into the workforce;
• Treatment for substance abuse.

(See the Guide de pratique, pages 22-29).

ACT is for clients who need it the most. It is addressed to those who:

• have psychotic illness (schizophrenia, schizo-affective disorder or bipolar illness);
• do not benefit from usual services;
• in most cases, are often rehospitalized;
• often, present co-occuring difficulties (susbtance abuse, trouble with the law);
• experience significant difficulties in functioning normally in the community.

(See the Guide de pratique, pages 8-10, or the article of Thomson, Gélinas et Ricard (2002)

The primary objective is to facilitate the recovery of all of the team’s clients. Duration of services is based on each client’s needs and progress. Clients generally need long-term services (several years), sometimes of indefinite duration. Some may eventually be transferred to lower-intensity case management programs.

(See the Guide de pratique, page 10).

An ACT team is a mobile, proactive team that offers a range of psychiatric treatment, rehabilitation and support services. ACT team members contribute their complementary areas of expertise, in a carefully-orchestrated way, to help each client, in a highly-individualized fashion, to meet his or her own objectives and to recover.

An ACT team serves the most vulnerable clients, who have severe mental illness and who, typically, are subject to multiple re-hospitalizations. Services are provided away from staff offices, in each client’s own living environment.

Rehabilitation activities are essential to help clients better structure their time, to restore their self-esteem, to improve their skills of daily living, and in many cases, when the client so wishes, to find work. Rapid, individualized interventions and crisis prevention are key elements of ACT.

Services are available seven days per week, with 24-hour on-call coverage.

An ACT team does everything necessary to help each client integrate the community, in a way that will give him or her the greatest possible satisfaction—in other words, an ACT team helps clients towards recovery.

• A better quality of life in a safe, normalizing environment;
• Greater satisfaction with life and increased autonomy;
• A marked reduction in hospitalizations;
• Increased work activities, especially in competitive work settings;
• A significant increase in leisure time, spent in activities that are meaningful for the client, and in relationships;
• Significant improvement in symptoms;
• Greater reliability in the taking of medications;
• Increased residential stability.