Mental health help missing target time

The number of children and young people in the NHS Lanarkshire area waiting to be seen by CAMHS during the Covid-19 pandemic has fallen – but less than half of those waiting for treatment are being seen within the target time.

CAMHS ( Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) delivers services for children and young people experiencing mental health problems, through multi-disciplinary teams which include psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, social workers and child therapists.

The Scottish Government standard states that 90 per cent should commence treatment within 18 weeks of referral, but between April and June this year only 271 people in the NHS Lanarkshire area – less than half – were seem within that set parameter.

There was an average wait time of 19 weeks. The only health board in the country where those referred had a longer average wait was NHS Borders, at 24 weeks.

In Scotland as a whole, almost 60 per cent of people were seen within the 18week period, with the average wait 14 weeks. NHS Lanarkshire referrals to CAMHS dropped dramatically during the second quarter of the year, while the country was in lockdown.

Only 416 people were referred from April to June, compared to 1035 for the same period last year. And of those who were referred, more than half were rejected.

The number of referrals per 1000 people under 18 that are accepted by CAMHS in Lanarkshire is the lowest in the country at just 1.5. The drop in referrals has given health boards across the country the opportunity to reduce a backlog in the number of young people waiting for treatment.

A total of 3561 children and young people started treatment at CAMHS in Scotland during the quarter to June 30, more than 13 per cent down from the 4122 starting treatment in the previous quarter, and more than 11 per cent down from 4012 starting treatment in the same quarter the year before.

At the end of the second quarter on June 30 this year, 856 were still on the list waiting to be seen by CAMHS in the Lanarkshire health board area.

By the end of the quarter to June this year there were 9986 people in Scotland still to be seen; during the previous quarter that figure stood at 12,022.

Commenting on the CAMHS statistics, Mental Health Minister Clare Haughey said: “We have been working closely with all health boards to ensure that Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) continue throughout the pandemic but, with the impact on capacity to see people face- to- face, emergency and urgent cases were prioritised during lockdown.

“Within the constraints of Covid-19 restrictions, health boards have responded to continue to treat significant numbers of children and young people in other ways, such as video conferencing to deliver care via the NHS Scotland approved Near Me platform. The decrease in new referrals has also enabled some boards to tackle the backlog and offer a large number of new appointments to patients who had been waiting more than 18 weeks.

“It is also encouraging to see that activity recovered quickly to prelockdown levels by June 2020, with almost 20 perc ent more new patients seen than in June 2019.”

It’s estimated that around 10 per cent of children and young people have a clinically diagnosable mental health problem and that a fifth of adolescents may experience a mental health problem in any year.

Cases were prioritised Clare Haughey