(CAMHS) and Schools - London Health Programmes

offer a culturally appropriate service. It provides outreach and early intervention
work. It is developing a service that gives due regard to issues of race, religion and
culture through regular staff training and development and use of appropriate
resources and close liaison with representatives from the Bangladeshi community.
Last year it piloted a solution focused short term group to develop confidence, selfesteem
and social skills of vulnerable and failing pupils. Youth workers are involved
to engage young people in activity groups to develop self confidence. Many of the
reasons for referral were education related, for example, non school attendance,
persistent lateness and risk of underachievement (highest – 74%). The schools
contributed space for individual and group work and staff time. Link workers are
given time to discuss referrals and give feedback on the project’s development.
A recent interim evaluation of the project found that the structure and organisation of
the project within the framework of apposite understanding of race and ethnicity was
useful and that this specifically targeted service was meeting the needs of difficult to
access young men (Barn et al, 2001)
5.5 Impact of national and local policies
Nearly all the case study areas referred to the HAS policy ‘Together We Stand’ and
using a tiered approach (HAS, 1995). In two of the case study areas this had influence
beyond the health service. In one, the Children’s Services Plan had adapted it for all
services in the area, and in the other the Education Service had adopted it for its pupil
support services. Other policies that had positive impact on this work were cited as
Quality Protects, Social Inclusion Agenda, and the Children’s Fund Grant Processes.
Although Quality Protects was mentioned, the Children in Need Assessments was not,
which may be related to the problems raised about working with Social Services (see
section 5.1.6). Almost all the areas had benefited from an initiative (see below) such
as Health Action Zone, Education Action Zones, Sure Start etc. Several managers
described the importance of support of national policies to back up this kind of
structural change.
‘It is useful to have directives to push people to work together. It means people can
give up power without looking out of face. From our perspective - mental health the
National Service Framework means we just have to get on with it together. If it had to
be worked out on a local basis it would be more difficult.’ (CAMHS manager)
However, there are policies that constrain this joint working when priorities are
different or administrative issues. For example, the Best Value process meant that
budgets had to be disaggregated so that health and education had to account for
everything separately. One LEA working jointly with health service was about to be
inspected by Ofsted which meant that they were concerned about the number of hours
the LEA staff spent in school, rather than the work they may have been doing
supporting health workers.
The pressures that schools were under in terms of academic performance, league
tables and the national curriculum received criticism as being a contributing factor of
some of the mental health problems in children. This was seen as the pressure on
children to achieve high results, and staff being too overwhelmed to offer adequate