CAMHS 5 Year Plan: Creating a whole system approach to young people’s mental health
Our Five Year CAMHS Sustainability and Demand Management Plan has set out how we will respond to the growth in demand while maintaining quality, safety and equity over the next five years.
The new plan is aiming to:
- Improve experiences for young people, children and families
- Create equitable access across our communities
- Define clear and consistent care offers
- Improve flow and reduce waiting times
- Increase productivity through simplifying processes and digitalisation
- Sustain delivery against financial and contractual requirements
At the second listening event, Bruce Clark, Consultant Psychiatrist and CAMHS Clinical Director at South London and Maudsley and Clinical Director at the King's Maudsley Partnership and Nicola Dykes, CAMHS Service Director introduced the plan and the intentions of the event.
Both touched on how things have changed drastically in the directorate, with rising demands and calls for key services to reset how they handle caseloads. Bruce asked: “How do we do things differently to focus on the best possible outcomes?”
Two individuals with lived experience in CAMHS – one previous patient and a mother of two daughters who have been in our care – shared their experiences with the room and advised what worked or didn’t work for them.
Discussing the support for her children, the mother noted that there was a good amount of communication between our services both locally and nationally which made the process much smoother. She also noted that her daughters had the same team members with them throughout which helped them to build relationships, trust and a support system. She said: “Consistency was one of the areas that is really important for young people.”
One of our previous service users shared that during her time, she wished that there was less of a focus on needing to be in a state of crisis to access support. She noted that early intervention and support communicating cultural barriers with parents and carers can make a huge difference to outcomes for young people.
To round off the event, attendees broke off into focus groups to discuss how we can best support young people in a whole system approach to ensure the new plan has tangible impact and outcomes.
The next and final event will take place on September 29th.
We aim to ensure that as many community partners can come together to contribute and we welcome any nominations to add to the invite list for September.
We have a short video and summary of the document for more information: CAMHS Sustainability and Demand Management Plan: 2025–2030 - South London and Maudsley
Your feedback is so important to us, so please do share your thoughts: CAMHS 5 Year Sustainability and Demand Management Plan - Event Feedback Form