In autumn 2022, the children and young people’s mental health team convened a Task and Finish group to develop a consistent approach for recording and reporting activity of London community CAMHS services. Past reports by the NHS Benchmarking Network suggested that there was considerable variation across London community CAMHS teams in terms of clinical contacts per whole time equivalent (WTE), and that London was below the national average. This generated much discussion on workforce capacity and utilisation. There was significant variation in how data was reported by trusts to inform this analysis, raising questions about implications that can be drawn or any similar comparative analysis on this metric. Given that contacts per WTE is seen as a key measure for workforce capacity and utilisation, an aligned approach on measurement was needed.

The group comprised of clinicians and service leads across the trusts providing community CAMHS services who advised the development of a guidance document. The purpose of this document is to set out a number of principles to help guide the approach to recording and reporting clinical activity for community CAMHS services, with the aim of standardising measurement across London.

We are delighted to launch this document and will be working with the group members to embed these approaches across London going forward.