Agenda item - Children and Young People Mental Health Transformation Plan

Resolved – That the Board approves the draft Children and Young People’s Mental Health Local Transformation Plan 2017 – annual refresh.

39.1    Officers introduced the transformation plan which was originally approved in 2015 and refreshed in 2016.The 2017 refresh placed emphasis on providing proactive support for young people how and where they chose to access it. 75% of mental health issues started before the age of 18 and 1 in 10 children would have mental health problems. 17% of expected need in the city was currently reached and the plan aimed to increase this to 30%.

39.2    Officers responded to Councillor Penn’s concerns around support available to children in care that looked after children were a priority. There was an imbedded mental health support worker but this single post was not enough to meet demand and more funding would be allocated in the next annual budget. The Executive Director, Children Families and Learning stated that there was an opportunity for the CCG and Council to work closer together to provide more funding and support.

39.3    Councillor Penn asked what progress had been made on changes to tier three CAMHS especially around outreach, how many children still faced the old system with an 18 week wait and how long was the backlog of referrals inherited by the community service.

39.4    Officers responded that the new specification for the tier 3 service was partially implanted from 1 June 2017 and a second phase which would include outreach was being implemented from 1 January 2018. The community provider YMCA expected the waiting list to be cleared by December 2017. Officers stated that they would provide written clarification around how many individuals were still being treated under the previous tier three specification.

39.5    Officers stated that they would provide a written response to Councillor Penn’s query about the gap between referrals and acceptance rates.

39.6    The Chief Executive of Brighton & Hove City Council asked officers to summarise the expected outcomes of the plan in 3-5 years’ time and how the Board will be able to measure these.

39.7    Officers responded that the outcome would be a city more open about mental health and seeking support for mental health issues. The new specification was based on evidence based treatments which will provide measures to show effectiveness.

39.8    Councillor Barford asked what caused the unmet mental health needs.

39.9    Officers responded that there was a mixture of individuals not seeking support and a historic threshold for CAMHS services which meant that individuals were often referred to other community and voluntary providers rather than admitted.

39.10  Councillor Barford asked why the CCG was not fully compliant on joint commissioning, why there was no published workforce plan and why allocated funding had not been spent.

39.11  Officers responded that the interface between the CCG and NHS around crisis response was not of a satisfactory standard and this was reflected in the lack of compliance in joint commissioning. There was no workforce plan for Brighton & Hove but a workforce plan covering the whole CCG area would be published by March 2018. All allocated funding had been spent the surplus was the result of a reporting error.

39.12  Councillor Taylor asked how much preventative work was being done in schools.

39.13  Officers responded that preventative work was key part of the role of CAMHS workers in schools. The CCG aimed to be more proactive in talking to children about mental health. The Executive Director, Children, Families and Learning supported the introduction of workers into school but stated that there was a lack of performance data.

39.14  Mr Deschene stated that it would have been useful to provide absolute numbers to allow the Board to see the magnitude of the issue.

39.15  Officers clarified that 1 in 10 children in Brighton & Hove was equal to 4,500 individuals and that only 17% around 765 children accessed support.

39.16 The Acting Director of Public Health and The Chair stated that they wanted future updates to put more focus on patient outcomes and move away from a description of process.

39.17  Councillor Penn suggested that it would be beneficial to adopt the Thrive model to jointly agree outcomes and targets with all stakeholders.          

39.18  Resolved – That the Board approves the draft Children and Young People’s Mental Health Local Transformation Plan 2017 – annual refresh.