Agenda item

The Service Lead – Early Years and Prevention, Slough Borough Council and Head of Children, Young People and Families, NHS East Berkshire Clinical Commissioning Group introduced a report on an overview of the work that had been undertaken as a result of the Local Transformation Plan (LTP) of the Children and Young People Mental Health and Wellbeing (East Berkshire) Plan.

In addition Members viewed an information video on the Young Health Champions programme. The Panel noted that the programme was credited by the Royal Society of Public Health and based on a partnership between health, education and local authorities. The programme provided additional value to existing work including that in conjunction with CAMHS.

In response to questions, the Panel was advised that:

·  the LTP was currently being refreshed with a January consultation deadline. The focus of the Local Transformation Plan in the current year was on early intervention;

·  measurements of the success of young health champions included the award of level 2 of the Royal Society of Public Health qualification and mental first aid qualifications. Further analysis was planned including the monitoring of school performance. The Young Health Champions had met with representatives of youth parliament in October;

·  table 1 did not include the 2055 pre-school children (aged 2 to 5) who were estimated to have a mental health disorder as some were national prevalence data. The new age groups of 1-8 and 5-16 enabled more access to services and early intervention. The Youth Champions supported tier 1 universal which was the majority of cases and from September the mental health support team would assist tier 2;

·  the funding was ring fenced and part of the long term NHS funding for 5 years;

·  early intervention training was taking place at Reading University and staff would be ready to accept cases from September 2020. 4 qualified education mental health practitioners  would be based in schools from January 2020 and would receive training as part of their course;

·  the capture of early health data from a young age would become more seamless with the new system.

The Panel expressed concern that although the average waiting time for an autism assessment had dropped by 45% in East Berkshire from 83 weeks in October 2018 to 45 weeks in June 2019, it was still a long wait. The officers indicated that work was on track to achieve a greater reduction.

It was agreed that the Panel would be provided with details of the websites containing the Young Minds evaluation of the youth health champions and work on the comprehensive review of autism and ADHD.

The Chair thanked the officers for the report and presentation

Resolved – That the report be noted