A significant investment of just over £4m has been secured to help tackle waiting lists and transform the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAHMS).
There are around 1200 children currently on the waiting list to see CAHMS, the overwhelming majority of which are waiting for an Autism or ADHD assessment.
Around £500k will be used for the immediate recruitment of six professionals to assist with those assessments and provide support post-diagnosis.
Children’s mental health
The increasing demand for CAMHS is not a local phenomenon, internationally there is recognition of the rapidly increasing demand for services, with the most recent survey by NHS Digital estimating that 1 in 5 children (20%) aged 8-16 years will have a probable mental disorder.
Once the list is reduced to a sustainable level it is intended that the average waiting time to access CAMHS will then be a maximum of 18 weeks for routine assessments, down from the current average of 48 weeks, with an ambition to offer assessments within six.
Where a referral is defined as urgent the aim will then be for patients to be seen within 24 hours, and if very urgent seen within four hours.
Costs
It is recognised that it will need more than a targeted waiting list to ensure the service is placed onto a sustainable footing.
To achieve this the majority of the funding, £3.4million, will be invested to transform the way services are accessed and provided – focusing on early intervention, community based support and providing a dedicated provision within educational settings.
The transformational costs of £3,444,708 will be funded from the Healthcare Transformation Fund, and the waiting list initiative will be met by contingency funding of £571,057.
The transformation of the service will include the creation of a single access point which will include self-referrals, an additional 400 shared-care agreements with GPs for the treatment of ADHD, access to psychological therapies for children and young people with low to moderate needs, and the delivery of dedicated mental health support within the Islands’ secondary schools and UCM.
CAHMS
The dedicated CAHMS service was originally designed to manage severe, complex and persistent disorders.
However historically there has been an absence of provision for lower or moderate needs on the Island, and a growing demand for wellbeing and mental health support, which the CAHMS service has been trying to manage in addition to the higher needs cases.
The CAHMS caseload, including these lower and moderate needs cases, has increased by 90% in the last three years, with over 13% of all the islands children and young people aged 4-17 in receipt of treatment or awaiting assessment.
This transformation is intended to resolve these long standing issues.
More information on the service transformation will follow, including an upcoming procurement exercise for a provider who can assist with the core functions of introducing a single point of access, as well as delivering psychological therapies and mental health provision in educational settings.
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