Children and Young People's Workstream
Getting Help Offer
The CYP workstream was asked to articulate the multi-agency Getting Help Thrive offer (previously known as CAMHS Tier 2) for children and young people with a learning disability, autism, a neurodevelopmental disorder or at risk of an eating disorder in North West England. This was in response to Recommendation 2 of the NW CAMHS review which benchmarked all CAMHS in North West England in 2021.
A working group was created consisting of professionals from mental health, education and local authority and lived experience representatives of co-production partners. A brief review of the background literature was conducted. Specific feedback was requested from experts in eating disorder. This has resulted in a framework for the Getting Help offer. The resulting document outlined the multi-agency “Getting Help” offer for 0-25 year old people with Autism, other neurodevelopmental disorders, Intellectual Disability (ID) and children & young people at risk of eating disorders
Outcomes Framework for Intensive Support Function in North West England
The workstream carried out a survey of all the NHS providers in the North West (NW) region that provided Intensive Support Functions (ISF) or enhanced community mental health service to autistic children and young people with or without ID. The aim was to review the key therapeutic components and service specifications of these models of care, explore the current challenges for the services in delivering these models of care and understand the common therapeutic principles across these models of care
The results of the survey indicated that in December 2021 many areas of NW England were still at an early stage of implementation. There was some variation across the region in models, measures used and footprint. Some of the common themes that emerged from this included:
- joint multi-agency and multi-disciplinary working,
- being person centred and working with the family,
- being flexible and responsive,
- drawing a range of therapeutic frameworks in a person centred way along with PBS approach,
- using an evidence based approach,
- clear eligibility criteria, referral pathway, step up/step down process and clear standard operating procedures
There were also themes about gaps in the wider multi-agency network support that children and young people received before referral to intensive support and on issues around recruitment and retention affecting service specifications.
It has been agreed to co-produce an outcomes framework for Intensive Support Functions as the next stage. A sub group has been set up for this purpose.
The Dynamic Needs Assessment Tool for the SEND population (DNAT-SEND)
This is a stratified needs assessment tool which will be used for early identification of multi-agency needs of children and young people in the community – specifically in educational settings. These needs would include early identification of the need for special educational support, support for social inclusion and needs, mental health and neurodevelopmental assessment. It would complement the existing tools used later for admission prevention, once children were known to services.
A sub group has been set up to develop the DNAT-SEND tool with representatives from local authority, education and CAMHS. Initial factors have been identified from a multi-agency perspective. Further co-production work is planned followed by validation of the factors and the production of the tool for piloting.