Mental
health problems in children and young people are more common than
many realise. The
Public Health Institute for Scotland Needs Assessment Report on
Child and Adolescent Mental Health (2003),
often referred to as the SNAP
report, states that about 10% of children and young people
‘have mental health problems which are so substantial that they
have difficulties with their thoughts, their feelings, their
behaviour, their learning, their relationships, on a day-to-day
basis’.
Specialist child and adolescent mental
health (CAMH) services comprise
multidisciplinary teams
with expertise in the
assessment, care and
treatment
of children and young people experiencing
mental health problems. The wider multidisciplinary and
multi-agency
team
around the child also has a key role
in supporting children and young people with any mental health
problems they may be experiencing. Integrated care pathways (ICPs),
in their simplest terms, tell service providers, children and young
people using services and their parents/
carers
what should be expected at any point along the
journey of care
. Using ICPs as the basis for CAMH
service delivery will help to ensure that:
-
assessment
,
care planning and care delivery
are centred on the child or young person and positive
outcome-focused
- care and treatment is in line
with the available evidence base
- effective care partnerships are
developed and sustained between agencies, children, young people
and their parents/carers
- relevant and useful information
is shared appropriately and in a timely way with children and young
people and their parents/carers and between professionals and
agencies, and
- any variations to planned care
are captured, analysed and acted upon.
Through the development and
application of ICPs as a basis for service provision, and through
the use of the data that they generate, NHS boards, and their
partners, will be able to demonstrate robust and responsive CAMH
services. This will support reflective practice and continuous
cycles of quality improvement. ICPs promote systems and processes
which are:
- fully embedded in a culture
that supports the delivery of care that is centred on the child or
young person
- safe and effective, and
- can be applied to all universal
and specialist CAMH services.