Minutes:
Ms Tina Swain, Service Director for CAMHS and Eating Disorders - Goodall Division at Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust (CNWL), advised that CNWL Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) worked with young people aged 0-25 and provided a mental health service in schools with teams working on early help and wellbeing. The organisation had been embedding the Thrive methodology and looking to redesign services so that each child was assessed in the context of their needs. A further report on progress of this work would be brought back to the Board.
Ms Swain advised that CNWL was looking to further reduce the wait for CAMHS services. The Hillingdon specialist community team had been stable for about a year so had been able to reduce the number of children and young people waiting more than 18 weeks for an assessment into single figures (currently only one person). As they each moved through the services, there had been a focus on their needs.
The Board was advised that five additional posts had been created to support Hillingdon with its therapeutic offer. The urgent care offer had also grown to move children and young people quicker through the service. As CAMHS moved towards Thrive and a more integrated service, consideration would be given to removing the tiered approach to services. Ms Hainstock advised that Thrive had recently been restarted and, with the support of P3Natvigator and Healthwatch Hillingdon, the model was now being populated with the wealth of services that were available in the Borough.
Ms Kelly O’Neill, the Council’s Interim Director of Public Health, noted that there tended to be a focus on CAMHS rather than on prevention and early intervention. As not everyone would be aware of the organisations that were able to provide help in relation to prevention, these would need to be promoted. It was anticipated that early intervention work would prevent more children and young people from needing to use Tier 3 and 4 services as currently little was done to support this work.
Ms Swain advised that the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people was everyone’s responsibility. As such, it was important that all partners worked together to provide a robust package of support. Mr Edmund Jahn, Chief Executive Officer at the GP Confederation, noted that there was a complementary crossover with the idea of how neighbourhoods worked, with multidisciplinary colleagues creating relationships to understand how each other worked and how they could work together more effectively.
Councillor Nick Denys, Chairman of the Council’s Health and Social Care Select Committee, advised that the Committee would be undertaking a scrutiny review that would cover the referral process into CAMHS as well as signposting. Ms Vanessa Odlin, Managing Director for Hillingdon and Mental Health Services, Goodall Division at CNWL, advised that a grant scheme had been set up with the Council to enhance the third sector offer. It would be important to hear from parents and young people and, to this end, a Parents Advisory Board was being set up in the Borough to help them navigate services (as well as a similar forum for young people).
RESOLVED: That the discussion be noted.