Children and Young People’s
Mental Health
The Children and Young Peoples Mental Health Programme supports the delivery of the core clinical programmes within the Long Term Plan and the Mental Health Implementation Plan 2019/20 - 2023/24 (the Implementation Plan) by connecting commissioners, providers, professionals, patients and the public across pathways of care with the aim of improving health outcomes. This is achieved by sharing best practice and innovation, assessing and benchmarking quality and outcomes and driving improvement where required, through targeted support.
What We Are Trying To Achieve
Working with our system partners we aim to improve the experience and outcomes for children and young people and their families.
We focus upon service transformation and improvement to make services better and more accessible. We also aim to highlight and help address health inequalities across Yorkshire and the Humber.
Working in partnership with children and young people and their families is an essential element of our work.
Why It’s Important
Mental Health problems often develop between the ages of 5-15.
Pre-COVID pandemic, around one in eight children and young people experienced mental health difficulties severe enough to warrant specialist support but only a quarter of those children and young people received it. The number of children and young people with a mental health disorder continues to rise. The most recent estimates are that one in six experience difficulties (NHS Digital – see Closing the Gap in Child and Youth Mental Health Support – Insights from the North West 2021)
Prompt access to appropriate support enables children and young people experiencing difficulties to maximise their prospects for a happy and healthy life (NHS Long Term Plan)
What We Have Achieved In The Last 6 Months:
We have
- Provided clinical leadership, regional improvement support, problem solving and advice on key themes and challenges.
- Enabled partners to collaborate by facilitating the sharing of best practice in order to improve services and experiences of care across Yorkshire and the Humber.
- Supported our Integrated Care Systems/Boards with the delivery of their Strategic Plans for Children and Young People’s Mental Health (CYPMH).
- Ensured our work programme is responsive to local and regional need, providing bespoke support to ICBs where required.
- Continued to promote opportunities for reducing health inequalities for children and young people, supporting local implementation of the Core20Plus5 initiative, desingned to support ICSs to drive action in health inequalities improvement.
(see individual programmes for further achievements)
What We Plan To Do In The Next 6 Months:
- Facilitate further opportunities for advancing Health equalities including poverty proofing mental health services.
- Explore barriers to access and identify improvement support needs.
Meaningful participation and engagement with children and young people, their families and carers will be at the heart of all our work programmes.
Meetings & Events
In addition to the meetings and events referenced within specific work programmes we have;
- Yorkshire and the Humber Clinical Network Children and Young People’s Mental Health Integrated Care Board (ICB) Programme/Place Based Leads Improvement Forum (Quarterly).
- Shared Learning Events (Ad-hoc) on topics identified by system need.
Professionals – dates and further details can be found on our Future NHS page.