Issue - meetings

The emotional wellbeing and mental health offer for children looked after update report is attached.

Officers spoke to the report and in summary shared that the service’s remit was to commission health services around emotional well-being and mental health, from online support to tier two support and specialist Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) provision.

Officers shared that all referrals were received through the Single Point of Contact (SPOC) Team in children services, and there had been an increase of the referrals due to the pandemic and national lockdown. Support was provided following triage and reviewed by the CAMHS specialist who would decide where the best support could be provided to the young person or intervention for treatment. This included Off The Record, NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) who would provide support service to those sexual assaulted and abused and SLaM CAMHS services.

During the pandemic and national lockdown, the service had increased their online presence for emotional wellbeing support, The service commissioned Kooth which offered free online support including peer support, anonymous chats and young people could also talk with a psychologist. Off The record and Drop In services both offered online counselling and virtual sessions.

The service had just under £500,000 pounds invested for children’s and young people mental health across a range of different areas, this looked further into transition from children’s and adults services to key transition stages. The service invested in locality workers to have named workers within specific geographical areas in the borough; the service had also increased offer in education, health care plans and crisis care during the difficult times.

Panel Members commented on the number of referrals received and queried how many referrals became active cases in comparison to the numbers referred. Though officers did not have the detail in numbers at hand, they advised that support provided to those referred had increased as the referrals were channelled through the SPOC team, therefore even if a referral requested low level intervention, the individual would still be signposted to a service to support those needs; no referral should be rejected, unless the referral was incorrectly completed for Early Help intervention instead of a mental health specific service.  

Panel Members welcomed the additional investment and additional number of workers that had been provided, and requested further information on whether any of the additional services had specific specialism in autism and also requested information on the progress of the introduction of a new diagnostic pathway in respect of autism and neurological issues. Officers advised that there was an additional investment into neuro developmental service within CAMHS who would be supporting on autism spectrum disorder (ASD) assessments through the education health care plan process and an ASD assessment CAMHS. In regards to the ASD and ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) pathway and review for the diagnosis and assessment, officers shared that they were at the signing off stage, and thus no decision had been made for the long term restructuring of the model. It was not known whether the progress of improvement be impeded by  ...  view the full minutes text for item 47

The emotional wellbeing and mental health offer for children looked after update report is attached.