Master of advanced studies in Criminology - SCIP - Universität Bern

Children's and adolescents' mental health and CAMHS 21moving back to the community because of the extreme crisis under whichthey were originally referred to hospital. Local services are stretched andthere is often no appropriate provision for the young people to move to. Wehave experienced young people waiting up to two years for an appropriateplacement after they have recovered …… Young people can often become ‘revolving door’ patients. They areadmitted to hospital, they recover and then on discharge, without as muchsupport as they need, they quickly deteriorate and become a re-admission. 3532. One of the best illustrations of the importance of early intervention, lower tier services,and the damaging impact when such services are lacking, was given by a young person:If funding was increased, trained CAMHS staff could begin to tackle theproblem in schools…this will greatly increase awareness of mental health ingeneral and encourage help to be sought before crisis is reached… my lack ofawareness led to my problems escalating until I was considered ‘high risk’ tomyself and even then, I was on a waiting list. It reached a point where I washurting myself daily to be finally be picked up by the CAMHS service. At thispoint I required a high level of support from services (possibly increasingexpense) 36Conclusions and recommendations33. Whilst most attention has so far centred on problems in accessing inpatienttreatment, compelling arguments have been made to this inquiry that the focus ofinvestment in CAMHS should be on early intervention–providing timely support tochildren and young people before mental health problems become entrenched andincrease in severity, and preventing, wherever possible, the need for admission toinpatient services. It is clearly unacceptable if a child or young person cannot access aTier 4 service close to their home, but for every child in this position, a further questionneeds also to be asked - has everything possible been done to prevent that child frombecoming so unwell that they needed admission to inpatient services? The evidence wehave received suggests poor provision of lower tier services may be increasing thenumber of children and young people requiring admission to inpatient services. Thissituation must be addressed by the Taskforce.35 Alpha Hospitals Ltd (CMH0068) para 2 viii, x36 GIFT Partnership (CMH0159), para 3