Agenda item

Children and Young People's Mental Health and Emotional Wellbeing

Minutes:

As the annual refresh of the Children and Young People's Mental Health Services Local Transformation Plan (CYPMH LTP) needed to be submitted to NHS England by 31 October 2019, it was agreed that its approval would be delegated to the Chairman of the Health and Wellbeing Board in consultation with the Chairman of Hillingdon CCG and Chair of Healthwatch Hillingdon. 

 

The report highlighted the continued progress and performance of the new online counselling service, Kooth, and the Thrive model.  These interventions had helped to reduce the number of referrals which had reduced the pressure on waiting lists.  The Board noted that Kooth had delivered cashable benefits in successfully addressing the escalation of need and early intervention with only 3 referrals or signposting to external services (specialist CAMHS) from 182 new registrations by Q1.  Consideration was being given to extending the Kooth service to include supporting issues regarding knife crime. 

 

Children and young people’s mental health and emotional wellbeing had been a standing item on the Board’s agenda for some time and the service provision appeared to have benefited from this.  However, caution would need to be exercised as performance was not yet where it needed to be. 

 

CAMHS was going through a significant transformation to enable it to meet the demands of a growing population which needed to access CAMHS services (currently only 65% of children were treated within 18 weeks of referral against a contract target of 85%).  Whilst this target had been met for some months recently, the current approach did not seem to be able to deliver against this target consistently.  A record system update had been undertaken which had also affected data quality.  New staffing models and new service types were also being investigated.  It was anticipated that early intervention models would prevent referrals and therefore free up resources to deal with more acute cases. 

 

It was noted that the GPs and Hillingdon Hospital would be seeing those patients where the interventions had not worked.  As such, it would be useful to hear from them about the impact that this work had had on them.  Dr Goodman advised that GPs had noticed an impact on the waiting lists and the routes of access.  Kooth had provided a portal of entry and had reduced waiting lists as it provided instant attention which was needed by this generation so that they did not lose momentum.  It was also thought that the waiting lists obscured the time to treatment which had shortened.  There was no one in attendance that was able to provide a Hillingdon Hospital perspective. 

 

RESOLVED:  That the Health and Wellbeing Board:

1.    approved the request to delegate authority to approve the annual refresh of the (CYPMH LTP) for submission to NHSE on 31 October 2019, to the Chairman of the Health and Wellbeing Board in consultation with the Chairman of Hillingdon CCG and Chair of Healthwatch Hillingdon.

2.    noted the progress made in developing the local offer available for CYP and families in ‘Getting Advice’ and ‘Getting Help’ (building resilience and early intervention and prevention), particularly the continued progress and performance in Q1/2 2019, by the new on-line counselling service KOOTH which had increased access to emotional wellbeing and mental health services for children in Hillingdon in 2019/20.

3.    noted the progress made in the development of a new integrated early intervention and prevention model. 

4.    noted that the CCG had been successful in securing DOH funding over the next 3 years to support this work.

Supporting documents: