Reduced waiting times for children's mental health
service
Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services
(CAMHS), commissioned by Worcestershire County Council and provided
by Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust, are celebrating the
results of some great improvements to the service provided to
Worcestershire families.
CAMHS is a specialist community health service
for children and young people who have moderate to severe emotional
and mental health problems. CAMHS has recently been praised by
commissioners for making significant improvements to the
service. In particular, waiting times have reduced since May
2011 when nearly a quarter of new referrals to the service had to
wait longer than 18 weeks for a first appointment. The latest
figures show that in February 2012 no cases waited longer than 18
weeks to be seen and the average waiting time continues to
reduce.
Angela Kirton, Commissioning
Manager for CAMHS said: "The staff in CAMHS have worked
extremely hard to make some significant improvements to the service
in a short period of time. They are now putting in place new
processes to make sure service improvement remains a
priority. Key to this is hearing from service users and
partners about what is working well and what can still be improved
on.'"
Worcestershire County Council and
Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust, are implementing new ways
of working for CAMHS teams in order to further improve and
modernise the service.
An assessment of needs and a service review
for children and young people with emotional and mental health
difficulties was conducted during the summer of 2011, and a number
of recommendations for change were made in order to provide more
accessible and effective services. The new service models have
recently been shared with stakeholders with positive results and
they are now being implemented.
For further information about the work of
the CAMHS team, please contact Angela Kirton 01905 765302.
This page was last reviewed 5 April 2012 at 14:45.
The page is next due for review 2 October 2013.