myHealthE - Enhancing families’ experiences of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services
Natasha Hutchinson (above), Service Manager and Clinical Specialist in Lambeth CAMHS Team©️South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust
The period of waiting for assessment and treatment with Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) can be challenging for both young people and their families. These families may need additional support and guidance during this time.
Clinicians at CAMHS want to better understand the needs of these families, and this is primarily achieved through mental health questionnaires called routine outcome measures. Previously these have mainly been sent via mail or handed to families whilst in the waiting room.
This approach led to frustration from caregivers who needed to spend time returning these questionnaires, as well as NHS trust staff who then had to manually enter responses onto their healthcare records system. This led to only a small number of these questionnaires being returned, giving clinicians less information on which to make decisions.
Created in collaboration with CAMHS Digital Lab and in response to community feedback from South London Listens, myHealthe set out to address these challenges through the development of myHealthE which allows these questionnaires to be completed online and for families to access a range of resources.
The platform was introduced in 2021 and has now been widely accessed by over 13,000 families. The myHealthE team have now produced a short film to explain the platform and benefits it can provide.
In this video we hear from a parent, a clinician and a researcher about their experience of myHealthE and how the platform has helped them.
What is myHealthE?
myHealthE is a secure online portal for families accessing their local Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). Developed by the CAMHS Digital Lab, part of the School of Academic Psychiatry at the IoPPN. Caregivers are automatically invited to enroll on the platform at the point that they are accepted onto the CAMHS waiting list and currently over 80% of those invited have signed up. Once enrolled, caregivers have access to a personalised space dedicated to their child’s care.
For families accessing CAMHS
The platform allows families to provide information to their clinician between appointments, keeping them up to date about how their child is getting on. They can also find resources and links to other services which might help especially while they are waiting for their first CAMHS appointment. These resources are curated by clinicians and are tailored to the local area of the families so that services are local and relevant to their needs. Each borough has created an introductory video to introduce their CAMHS service and give families information about what to expect during their CAMHS assessment and appointments. Families can also join the Consent for Contact register and find out about clinical research that they can take part in.
For clinicians
myHealthE has greatly improved the return rate of questionnaires, which were previously sent on paper in the post. This provides clinicians with more information to make clinical decisions, and a view of how young people’s challenges are progressing including in the period prior to their first appointment. Information provided by families and teachers on myHealthE is also sent directly to their healthcare record at CAMHS saving CAMHS staff hours of administrative time.
For researchers
Families can also use myHealthE to join our Consent for Contact register to agree to be contacted for research and researchers can use the portal to screen eligible participants for their studies. More than 3,000 families have joined this register, which helps researchers quickly recruit to their projects.
For more information on myHealthE please contact the CAMHS Digital Lab via camhsdlab@kcl.ac.uk.
