New milestone reached for region-wide improvements to CAMHS day services
Work to ensure young people can access the same high-quality mental health day services - wherever they live in the East Midlands - has moved a step closer to completion.
The East Midlands Alliance CAMHS (child and adolescent mental health services) provider collaborative has now finalised a specification for CAMHS day services, which was developed through co-production with service users, families and clinicians from across the region.
Day services can provide crucial alternatives to hospital admission in a less restrictive setting for young people in need of specialist mental health support. It is known that service users, their families and carers want timely access to the right care in the right environment for their needs - and the provision of more services in the community supports one of the key shifts of the NHS 10-Year Health Plan: to move the focus of care from hospital to the community.
Investing in day services has been a big priority for the East Midlands CAMHS provider collaborative - and it has been instrumental in improving outcomes and experiences for young people while the reducing inpatient admissions by 65% since the collaborative was launched in 2021.
Now, following a detailed review of the need for additional day services in every county in the East Midlands, the new service specification has been agreed and will be piloted by CAMHS providers in Lincolnshire and Leicestershire over the coming months.
Learnings from this pilot will then be used to inform the rollout of a universal CAMHS day service offer for young people throughout the region.
Simon Harris, Director of New Care Models for the East Midlands CAMHS Collaborative, said:
"The agreement of a new day service model is another big step forward towards our ambition of providing the best possible mental health support for children and young people, wherever they live in the East Midlands. We'd like to thank all the service users, families and professionals for their invaluable contributions to the development of this model, and we look forward to getting the two pilot programmes up and running very soon."