Waiting lists for the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) is stressful for those in need, their parents/guardians, and the clinicians, a meeting has heard.
A joint meeting with Bedford Borough Council’s Children’s Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee and the Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee (17 July) had a presentation on the transition from children and young people’s mental health services to adult services.
Cllr Nicola Gribble (Independent, Renhold & Ravensden) asked about the waiting times to be seen by CAMHS.
“The waiting times for an autism assessment are really long,” Dr Alex Cooper-Bastien, consultant clinical psychologist and psychological therapies lead for North Bedfordshire CAMHS, said.
“We have particular targets around eating disorders, which are much shorter than other areas. And certainly, if a young person is in crisis they’ll get seen urgently.
“There isn’t a single waiting time for the service, usually what happens for our core services is that children will get assessed very quickly – so within a few weeks.
“The difficulty then can be depending on what service they want and how readily available that is.”
Dr Cooper-Bastien added that if there are enough young people to offer a group then they may be seen a “bit quicker”.
And that waiting time is one of the common complaints to the services on offer.
“It’s really difficult for parents and families waiting,” she said.
“We’re constantly looking at waiting lists of who we need to pick up next, who we are most concerned about.
“And sometimes it’s a real source of stress for clinicians as well. They feel the burden of that responsibility of the decision-making of who gets seen next.
“There’s always that human element to it, if you’re going to pick up another young person to offer therapy from the waiting list, you usually have to close somebody else.
“And maybe that person isn’t quite okay yet. They’re really difficult decisions, and people lose sleep over it,” she said.
By John Guinn
Local Democracy Reporter
