Agenda item

[Margaret Courts, Children’s Commissioning Manager, Wolverhampton Clinical Commissioning Group, to present an update report on the refreshed CAMHS Local Transformation Plan]

The Children’s Commissioning Manager for the Wolverhampton CCG presented an update report on the CAMHS (Child and adolescent mental health services) Transformation Plan.  In the current year, the Local Authority and the CCG, along with some funding from Head Start had developed a tier two service which had been awarded to the Children’s Society.  The Service was called “Beam Wolverhampton”.  It had a couple of drop-in sessions each week and also had some more structured booked CYP improving access to psychological therapy appointments available. They had also put in place an on-line counselling service.  The other area they were looking at doing was crisis intervention, which would help prevent young people being admitted to hospital.

The Children’s Commissioning Manager for the Wolverhampton CCG stated that there were still some gaps in the CAMHS Service.   One of these was the need for an LD (Learning Disability) CAMHS consultant.  Autism in general was also an ongoing issue.  They were working hard to address where their workforce was across Wolverhampton, as within any emotional mental health and well-being system there was a need to focus on the universal mental health offer and not just specialist CAMHS Services.  This included looking at what provision the schools had and the voluntary sector.  There were many voluntary organisations across the City which provided intervention services which were not commissioned by the CCG or the Local Authority. 

The Children’s Commissioning Manager for the Wolverhampton CCG commented that one of the areas that NHS England had tasked them with was improving the evidence based interventions that young people were having.  Consequently, this meant expanding the training for their workforce.  They would be inviting the voluntary sector to some of the training being undertaken. 

The Children’s Commissioning Manager for the Wolverhampton CCG stated that there were currently three young people in tier four beds, which was a low number.  Last year in total there had been fifteen, compared to ten in total in the current year.  These numbers helped to demonstrate that the community services were improving.  They were making some improvements to the Youth Offending Team to help improve services when people came out of detention.

A Member of the Panel asked who paid for the cost of beds for children needing mental health support.  The Children’s Commissioning Manager confirmed that the costs for the beds were met by Specialised Commissioning Services and not the Trust or the CCG.  Depending on the bed required some children were placed well away from their home area due to bed shortages.  If children, who had challenging behaviour, were being kept at a paediatric assessment unit at New Cross, then the RWHT Trust could ask for additional funding from the CCG to meet security costs.  The Chief Executive of the RWHT Trust stated that it was scandalous that if ever they had a ten hour breach in the Accident and Emergency Department it was always related to them finding a mental health bed.  The distances that people had to travel was horrendous, a problem which he had raised with the Secretary of State.  Patients had waited 36 hours in Accident and Emergency, which required security staff to keep them and others safe. 

The Director of Strategy and Transformation of the Wolverhampton CCG stated that the CCG were not legally permitted to commission mental health beds for children, this had to be done by Specialised Commissioning Services in NHS England.  There were no beds located in the Wolverhampton area for children’s mental health services.   

A Member of the Panel commented that there were a number of younger people presenting with issues of gender fluidity.  They asked if their needs had been anticipated.  In response the Children’s Commissioning Manager for the Wolverhampton CCG stated that the local CAMHS team had training from Mermaids, who were a specialist charity raising awareness about gender nonconformity in children and young people amongst professionals and the general public.  Training was also being rolled out to local schools. 

There was a discussion about the on-line counselling service and the different options available, further information was available on-line.  There was a further discussion about self-referral options within the CAMHS Service and the pros and cons of this option.