Mental health organisations, including the county council, have revealed what key priorities they promise to focus on following a national review into children and young people’s mental health services.
Hertfordshire was one of 10 places that health and social care watchdog the Care Quality Commission (CQC) chose to visit as part of a national review into children and young people’s mental health services.
The CQC published its recommendations in a report today called Are we listening?
More than 70 professionals from schools, child and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS) providers and social care met the CQC team last October, together with groups of young people, parents and carers, during a week-long visit.
Hertfordshire was the final area visited and Green Paper author, Catherine Tyack, from the department of health, accompanied the review team for one day to hear first-hand about HPFT’s children and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) and its community eating disorder and perinatal mental health teams.
Hertfordshire’s two NHS clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), East and North Hertfordshire CCG and Herts Valleys CCG, which buy health services for the county’s population, are working with Hertfordshire’s Health and Wellbeing Board, Public Health, Hertfordshire County Council and other partners to develop and implement the mental health and wellbeing transformation plan for children and young people in Hertfordshire.
Key priorities are to:
• Focus on prevention and early intervention to give children and young people good emotional wellbeing support
• Improve access for children and young people to psychological therapies
• Improve communication between education and mental health services for children and young people
• Develop community eating disorder services
• Improve perinatal care, particularly for mums-to-be and new mothers, as there is a strong link between parental (particularly maternal) mental health and children’s mental health.
• A lot of work has been done in the last two years to focus on improving access to early help to give children and young people and adults good emotional wellbeing support.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here