Question:
I am hearing conflicting information on the waiting list for CAHMs support in Wokingham. My daughter is eleven and suffers from anxiety and OCD and I was told by my GP that the waiting list for CAHMs could be up to eighteen months so I was offered support from ARC counselling for six sessions instead which we took but now their funding also seems to have been cut as that is no longer available to me either. Upon attending the workshop on children and young people's mental health on 14 March in Woodley I heard from the CAHMs team presenting there on two occasions during their talks both on stage and in the workshops that the waiting list is around one year. I was then informed that at the last meeting of the Health and Wellbeing Board it was stated the waiting list was now only six weeks. I am now having to pay Cardinal Clinic £350 for each psychiatrist appointment and then £100 for each psychologist appointment following that, can you clarify the time frames for the waiting list and also what is being to address the long waits in the Borough?
Minutes:
Question
I am hearing conflicting information on the waiting list for CAHMs support in Wokingham. My daughter is eleven and suffers from anxiety and OCD and I was told by my GP that the waiting list for CAHMs could be up to eighteen months so I was offered support from ARC counselling for six sessions instead which we took but now their funding also seems to have been cut as that is no longer available to me either. Upon attending the workshop on children and young people's mental health on 14 March in Woodley I heard from the CAHMs team presenting there on two occasions during their talks both on stage and in the workshops that the waiting list is around one year. I was then informed that at the last meeting of the Health and Wellbeing Board it was stated the waiting list was now only six weeks. I am now having to pay Cardinal Clinic £350 for each psychiatrist appointment and then £100 for each psychologist appointment following that, can you clarify the time frames for the waiting list and also what is being to address the long waits in the Borough?
Answer:
I as the Director of People Services am not directly responsible for CAMHS, CAMHS being Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services, but naturally we do work closely as a local authority with our CCG partners in designing our workstreams around the needs of our children and young people. I have canvassed the views of our CAMHS colleagues to inform the response and I am happy to make sure that Tracey does get full sight of the response but I will read it as if she were here.
Naturally as a local partnership working with our most vulnerable children and people and families we are disappointed and sorry that she has found the process of finding the right support for her child so difficult and appreciate the level of frustration she must have felt with the system. Our colleagues, the CCG, continues to work with GP’s to update them on the availability and waiting times of CAMHS services and will take her question as a reminder of the importance to continue to do this. However to provide Tracey with clear information now on the current arrangements for accessing CAMHS as well as local youth counselling services, I am just going to break it down:
In order for a child to access support for Anxiety and Depression from CAMHS, firstly there requires a referral to the Berkshire Healthcare Foundation Trust (BHFT) common point of entry (CPE). The average waiting time in CPE if not an urgent case, based on assessed criteria, is 5 weeks. Once the child has been referred onwards from CPE to the Anxiety and Depression pathway, it is currently, and as this was written, 13 weeks, until the children and family have their first session with the specialist from the anxiety and depression team, for routine cases.
There are currently 70 children waiting to start an intervention on the Anxiety and Depression pathway, with 48 of these (69%) waiting under 12 weeks. This information was accurate as of the end of December 2017 from the end of the Q3 performance report from the Trust.
At the February 2018 Health and Wellbeing Board meeting the CCG and local authority reported progress against the Future in Mind programme. In this report it included waiting time data but that was from Q2 which is at the end of October. At that the time, the average waiting time at this point for CPE was 3 weeks and for the Anxiety and Depression pathway was 10 weeks, and remember that was Q2. Obviously wait times change regularly and recently have increased from Q2 to Q3, but this is mainly due to the consistent increase of referrals into CPE, currently managing an 18% increase on this time in terms of demand on last year, as well as increasing numbers of complex referrals and therefore the need for multidisciplinary interventions and longer care packages.
Lastly, to conclude, both the local authority and the CCG have funded ARC youth counselling service and there has been no reduction in funding for the next financial year, 2018-19, for this service and so we would expect the service to continue to be available to local residents as it is now. The local authority and CCG have regular contract monitoring meetings with ARC so we will look into your experience and work to ensure that this is avoided in the future.
The Interim Director People Services indicated that he would be commissioning the development of a CAMHS Improvement Plan. Dr Winfield requested that this work be located within the Future in Mind Group.
Nick Campbell-White indicated that some people had informed Healthwatch that they had found it difficult to access the Common Point of Entry. He was asked to provide any specific information to the Interim Director of People Services.
With regards to ARC Clare Rebbeck asked whether 6 sessions was standard. Paul Senior commented that he hoped that it was based on the individual needs. Clare Rebbeck also indicated that a community CAMHS awareness event had been held two years previously and that information regarding the different providers was on the Wokingham Direct website.