Mental health changes concern
Get help
The region’s after hours specialist mental health crisis team for children and adolescents is set to be disbanded.
Instead the after hours crisis service will be provided by a team that caters to all ages.
Changes to the on-call Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) crisis team were proposed last July.
Nelson Marlborough Health acting general manager of mental health Pam Kiesanowski said following extensive consultation, the change would see one on-call overnight crisis service for all ages, staffed by mental health service staff.
But critics said the region’s CAMHS crisis service was effective and should remain unchanged. Some of the current CAMHS staff have had two years specialist training in how to deal with children and adolescents needing mental health support. Concerns were raised staff in the all ages team would not have the same level of expertise.
The new service would replace the current arrangement where both CAMHS staff and crisis team staff were on call.
Calls made to the mental health service between 11pm and 8am were previously answered by an on-call CAMHS staff member but since early December went through the Homecare Medical triage service. Other changes would be gradually made to the service over six months beginning in February.
Kiesanowski said a flexible roster meant staff availability would be better during the times of highest need.
‘‘If they have been assessed as needing to be seen urgently they will be seen quickly by a fullyqualified mental health clinician that night.’’ A CAMHS clinician would then follow-up with the client the next day.
Kiesanowski said one of the benefits of taking CAMHS clinicians off on-call overnight work is that more staff would be available during the day for essential follow-up appointments, having not been on-call overnight.
She said children and young people would not notice any change in the service they received. Most other DHBs had one overnight crisis service for all ages and the changes would bring Nelson Marlborough’s overnight service into line.
Nelson student Zoe Palmer said she was concerned about the changes to the service.
Palmer was behind a recent poetry slam evening, Word on the Street, where people of all ages shared poems with a mental health theme. They highlighted issues from the stigma surrounding mental health issues, to dealing with anxiety and the pain of losing a friend to suicide.
She said the fact that young mental health service users hadn’t been asked for input on the proposal was ‘‘appalling’’.
‘‘I think the collaborative process behind this was really weak and I don’t think it is a move that has the best interests of the youth at heart.’’
Palmer said it was hard to have an effective service for youth if there was no capacity for feedback from them.
Late last year she distributed a survey among 300 youth about the current CAMHS crisis service. The majority of responses were positive and in favour of the service remaining as it was.
Labour’s Nelson spokesperson Rachel Boyack, who spoke at the Word on the Street event, said she had heard from a range of people in the community who were concerned about the changes.
‘‘The young people I have spoken to feel very strongly that they have specific needs that need to be looked after by people with specific skills.’’
To lose the expertise in the current CAMHS on-call overnight crisis team ‘‘didn’t make any logical sense’’.
Boyack said it was concerning that there had been no consultation with service users or their families. ‘‘Until there has been a full governmental review into mental health services, I believe there should be a moratorium on any changes to existing provision of mental health services.’’