Abel, Kathryn M;
Whelan, Pauline;
Carter, Lesley-Anne;
Tranter, Heidi;
Stockton-Powdrell, Charlotte;
Gutridge, Kerry;
Hassan, Lamiece;
... Edbrooke-Childs, Julian; + view all
(2025)
Enhancing referrals to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services: the EN-CAMHS mixed-methods study.
Health and Social Care Delivery Research
, 13
(21)
10.3310/GYDW4507.
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Abstract
BACKGROUND: National Health Service Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services are specialist teams that assess and treat children and young people with mental health problems. Overall, 497,502 children were referred to National Health Service Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services between 2020 and 2021, and almost one-quarter of these referrals were not successful. Unsuccessful referrals are often distressing for children and families who are turned away usually after a long waiting period and without necessarily being redirected to alternative services. The process is also costly to services because time is wasted reviewing documents about children who should have been referred for alternative help and may prevent young people who need specialist help receiving it in a timely way. The overarching aim of this study was to understand what the problems are with Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services referrals and identify solutions that could improve referral success. A key objective was to talk widely with young people and families, people working in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services and mental health professionals so that we could understand fully what the problems were and how we might develop their solutions. We gathered individual pseudonymised patient data from nine Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, and referral data from four National Health Service Trusts to look at what data are available and how complete it is. We report wide variation in the numbers of referrals between and within Trusts and in the proportions not being successful for treatment. Data on factors such as age and gender of children and young people referred into Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services and who made the referral are routinely collected, but ethnicity of the children and young people's reason for referral are not as well collected across all Trusts. We also conducted focus groups with over 100 individuals with differing perspectives on the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services referral process (children and young people, parents and carers, key referrers, and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services professionals) and asked about current difficulties within the referral process, as well as potential solutions to these. CONCLUSIONS: Problems identified included: confusion about what Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services is for, that is what it does and does not provide; and lack of support provided during the referral process. Possible solutions included: streamlining the referral pathways through digital technologies with accompanying standardisation of referral forms for National Health Service Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services; and early ongoing communication throughout the referral 'journey' for the referrer/family. FUTURE WORK: Should consider the standardisation of and improvement to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services referral process following the recommendations outlined in this project. STUDY REGISTRATION: This study is registered on ClinicalTrials.gov with the identifier: NCT05412368. https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05412368. FUNDING: This award was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Health and Social Care Delivery Research programme (NIHR award ref: NIHR131379) and is published in full in Health and Social Care Delivery Research; Vol. 13, No. 21. See the NIHR Funding and Awards website for further award information.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Enhancing referrals to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services: the EN-CAMHS mixed-methods study |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.3310/GYDW4507 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.3310/gydw4507 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2025 Abel et al. This work was produced by Abel et al. under the terms of a commissioning contract issued by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. This is an Open Access publication distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 4.0 licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. For attribution the title, original author(s), the publication source – NIHR Journals Library, and the DOI of the publication must be cited. |
| Keywords: | CAMHS, DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES, MENTAL HEALTH, OBESRVATIONAL STUDY, REFERRAL PROCESS, Adolescent, Child, Female, Humans, Male, Adolescent Health Services, Child Health Services, Mental Disorders, Mental Health Services, Referral and Consultation, State Medicine, United Kingdom |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Clinical, Edu and Hlth Psychology |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10210507 |
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