Agenda item

Mr Keith Spencer, Managing Director at Hillingdon Health and Care Partners, advised that, unfortunately, Ms Vanessa Odlin and Mr John Beckles, the subject matter experts had been unable to attend this meeting. 

Mr Sean Bidewell, Joint Borough Director for the Integrated Care Board (ICB), advised that a new website had been developed for Thrive (which was an integrated, person-centred approach to delivering mental health services for children, young people and their families and provided support for their wellbeing).  The website provided links to Council services as part of the Stronger Families programme and a digital directory of services that would go live in March 2026.  It included information about referral routes and crisis contacts and provided support for children, young people and their families whilst they waited for specialist input. 

The Thrive framework and website had been developed following engagement with families and professionals (more than 200 partners had been involved in one engagement event) and had been co-produced with children, young people and their families.  The concept had been based on a ‘no wrong front door’ approach so that, even if the service that had been contacted was not an appropriate pathway, the child or young person was not redirected elsewhere without support.  An ongoing feedback loop had also been put in place. 

The sections on the website included:

1. Self Care: providing practical tips for children and young people for a range of issues;
2. Parent and Carer Support: providing around 35 links to different organisations or bodies that might be able to provide help; and
3. I Need Urgent Help: providing a range of telephone numbers for different organisations.

The website provided information about how Thrive could help with different conditions such as anxiety, explaining what caused it, what the symptoms were, etc.  It also included the contact details for more than 100 ‘Helpful Organisations’ and could be filtered by age group (under 13, 13-18 and parent/carer). 

It was queried whether contacts and information were available on the website to help deescalate when a child or young person was thinking about suicide or self-harm, especially out of hours.  Ms Andrea Shand, Service Director for CAMHS & Eating Disorders at Goodall Division, Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust (CNWL), advised that one of the Thrive quadrants related to risk support and provided links to things like NHS111 and telephone numbers to 24 hour urgent care services (no chat services were provided as these were potentially risky).  The web content was considered by a working group and went through a process and the material was nationally accredited or signed off by a professional.  Service user stories had been included on the site and, as the Thrive contract would be in place for three years, the information therein would be kept up to date as part of that agreement. 

Ms Shand advised that GPs had been very supportive of the new approach to children and young people’s mental health.  A two-hour online CAMHS masterclass had been set up for GPs and had resulted in streamlined changes to the GP CAMHS referral form which was now being used as a blueprint for other boroughs. 

Members congratulated partners for the development of what appeared to be a really good website but queried how it would be advertised to children and young people.  Mr Bidewell advised that he would find out how the website would be publicised once live and pass this on to the Democratic, Civic and Ceremonial Manager to share with the Committee.  Members suggested that schools would be a good place to advertise the website. 

Ms Shand noted that CNWL worked across five different London boroughs and that, of these, Hillingdon’s Thrive work was at the most advanced stage.  Thrive was a national model to support children and young people’s health and wellbeing which required services to work collaboratively in everyone’s best interest. 

Ms Kim Rice, Associate Director of Transformation at The Confederation Hillingdon CIC, advised that a Mental Health Coordinator had been appointed for the south west of the Borough.  Data had been considered alongside local intelligence and reports to Healthwatch Hillingdon and an increase in the cohort of children and young people with mental health challenges had been identified in the area.  A scoping exercise had been undertaken with organisations that wanted to join up and work together to improve services for these residents.  A workshop had been held to look at how services could be aligned to Thrive and how help could be provided to those children, young people and families that struggled to navigate the system.  One output from the workshop had been the need to create a role that could increase GP capacity and support people to get to the right services at first contact. 

A one-year pilot proof of concept for a Children and Young People’s Coordinator role was subsequently created with the appointee starting in June/July 2025 (they saw their first patients in August 2025).  This person had been able to contribute towards the design of their role and to identifying and addressing any gaps or needs (with 26 services to support young people in Hillingdon, there should not have been any gaps for them to fall through).  It had been recognised that children and young people did not want to be seen as being different so did not want to be pulled out of classes at school to have an appointment.  They did not want clinical spaces and often wanted to be able to find out information on their own. 

It was noted that the Mental Health Support Team had been provided in some schools but had not covered all schools in Hillingdon, despite demand being greater than supply.  Ms Shand advised that this initiative had been rolled out in waves.  CNWL had been awarded two additional services in wave 14.  Wave 11 had been completely rolled out across Hillingdon and, with the introduction of wave 14, gave 61% coverage of the Borough’s schools, which was one of the highest coverages in London (working towards the national 100% target by 2029).  Monthly multi-disciplinary meetings were held in Hillingdon to discuss complex cases and signposting. 

In a four-month period, 136 young people had been supported and had reported a 30% average improvement in how they were feeling (this equated to a wellbeing value of around £600k over a twelve-month period).  Most of these referrals had come from the south west part of the Borough with the GP practices in the two Primary Care Networks involved taking different approaches to triage (both of which had worked well and had posed no risk).  This new post had released over 22 hours of GP practice administration time and around 80 hours of GP time during the four-month period. 

Consideration was now being given to working with CAMHS in relation to those children and young people that did not meet the criteria to receive services (this was about one third of those who presented at CAMHS) so that they were immediately referred to the Children and Young People Coordinator.  Given its impact, the post would be funded by the south west Neighbourhood going forward and the learning would be used to develop the Heathrow Villages Coordinator role.  Work was underway to expand this initiative out to other areas in the Borough with a final report on the proposal being drafted ready for August 2026. 

Concern had previously been expressed that children, young people and their families had been having to repeat their stories over and over again to various service providers as they were passed around the system.  Ms Rice advised that each service provider had their own statutory information systems that they had to use which didn’t interact with each other and which made information sharing more difficult.  However, a children and young people’s passport was being developed which would have the young person’s details and which they would be able to physically take to their appointments.  Mr Bidewell advised that a new system had been introduced which would enable many computer systems to talk to each other with regard to different organisations being able to gain access to clinical notes. 

During the review, Members had heard some distressing stories and learnt about the frustrations of families trying to navigate the system, including the poor communication from service providers.  Ms Shand advised that the majority of complaints still tended to be in relation to communication and mistakes were still being made.  That said, the language and format of letters had been looked at and clinical language was still needed but further improvements could be made.  In CNWL’s two-year business plan, communication had been identified as one of the five key priorities and young people were being included in the work on this priority as it was important to ensure that the correct language was used (including on the CAMHS website). 

RECOMMENDATION: That:

1. Mr Bidewell pass information about how the Thrive website would be publicised to the Democratic, Civic and Ceremonial Manager to share with the Committee; and
2. the discussion be noted.