Guidance to support recording and reporting of CAMHS activity

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.

Support for parents and carers of children and young people with eating disorders

Transformation Partners in Health and Care and London’s three Children and Young People’s Mental Health Inpatient Provider Collaboratives have been working with Beat, the UK’s Eating Disorder charity, to ensure that parents and carers have access to high-quality support so they can best support their loved ones. Beat offer a range of free support for anyone caring for a child or young adult, which can be in addition to any specialist services they are already accessing.

Support for parents and carers across London

Any parent or carer across London can access Beat support, including those whose children and young people have not been referred into an eating disorder service or Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS).

Beat support includes:

• Developing Dolphins
• Raising Resilience
• Nexus
• Solace and,
• Coping with Celebrations.

Visit Beat’s website for more information or to sign up to a service. Parents and carers can also call Beat’s helpline on: 0808 801 0677 where the team will answer any questions and work with them to ensure that they are on the best programme for their needs.

See our latest work on children and young people’s eating disorders here.