627 children still waiting for mental health care

MORE than 620 children and teenagers are waiting for mental health care in Gloucestershire – with many waiting more than two years for help.

Civic chiefs say they are seriously concerned that the four to 11-year-old cohort in particular has been suffering terribly since the coronavirus pandemic.

Councillor Collette Finnegan (C, Abbeydale), who is Gloucester City Council’s representative on Gloucestershire County Council’s health overview and scrutiny committee, asked health chiefs what they are doing to improve the situation with child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS).

She said: “The waiting list for CAMHS is anything between 18 months to two years. What are we doing to address that please?

“My concern is we have a number of young children who have suffered quite a lot during Covid. The four to 11-year-olds that are suffering terribly.”

Douglas Blair, chief executive officer of Gloucestershire Health and Care Foundation Trust, said he recognised that the waiting list continues to be very long. He told the committee that the total waiting list has reduced since the start of the year but they still have 627 on the waiting list.

“It was higher in January. About 60 per cent of that waiting list has been waiting under a year while 40 per cent is over a year.

“Absolutely we’ve still got some very long waits that we are tackling but we feel we are starting to make some progress. Both in terms of reducing the total size of the waiting list but also in particular one of the challenges we’ve had in this period of very significant increase of demand we have also been expanding the workforce in different ways.

“We’ve wanted to put more mental health support in schools, that’s drawing on the same people in terms of the workforce. Our core child and adolescent mental health service has had a reduction in its total number of people in post during this calendar year.”