Lambeth are delivering a pilot with South London and the Maudsley (SLaM) NHS Trust, and community organisations (The Well Centre, Coram and Place2Be) to better understand how we can join up our response to children and young people’s emotional health and wellbeing need, bringing services, data and statutory provision together.
The Well Centre is a health centre located at the Herne Hill Group Practice that provides young people aged 11-20 with open access to GPs, counsellors, and health & wellbeing practitioners in one place. The centre assesses the needs of presenting young people via a holistic assessment called the Teen Health Check. The pilot will build on the work of the Well Centre and scale and/or replicate this
model to extend its availability across the borough. The pilot aims to seamlessly transition young people to the relevant services once their needs have been assessed. The two-year pilot has been developed to measure how Lambeth’s mental health services can work with third-party providers to create a joined-up offer for young people in the borough, with the long-term aim of reducing demand on Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) . The total budget of £400k has already been approved, and two voluntary sector providers have been appointed to deliver the pilot – Coram and Place2Be. The pilot will ensure developments are aligned with work in schools and other areas of early help and prevention.
The pilot aims to provide a seamless service for young people accessing mental health and wellbeing support in Lambeth. It aims to enable service providers to share, when necessary, the information describing the needs of the young person so that when a young person moves to a different service, they receive the best support they need quickly and without having to tell their story repeatedly. The pilot will track the outcomes for young people accessing the services covered by this pilot to determine the effectiveness of those services at meeting the young person’s needs and, in the long term, reducing the proportion of young people with severe or acute mental health needs. The main work strands of the pilot include mapping existing preventative and early intervention services and the referral pathways between them and also CAMHS. The pilot will work with third sector organisations and define the services they offer.