Our Transformation Plan for children and young people’s mental health and emotional wellbeing services
We have published our transformation plan for children and young people’s mental health and emotional wellbeing services in south East London. The plan covers what we aim to achieve overall, and the key actions we will take in 2022/23 and 2023/24. Our aim is to support service improvements that will benefit children and young people, their parents and carers across our six boroughs.
The NHS works with partners across south east London: the voluntary and community sector, social enterprises, providers of mental health services, local authority partners and commissioning leads. Together, we have agreed priority areas for transformation that include:
- Reducing the time that children and young people wait to access mental health services, and providing support and information to children and families while they wait
- Strengthening our mental health offer available in schools
- Improving our parental mental health offer
- Developing initiatives that support young people as they transition out of child and adolescent mental health services.
Martin Wilkinson, South East London ICB Chief Operating Officer, Southwark, says: “The plan outlines the progress we have made so far in improving care for the emotional wellbeing and mental health of children and young people. But it also acknowledges that we can still do more to transform services across our six boroughs in South East London. For example, we are working with our partners to reduce waiting times for child and adolescent mental health services (which increased substantially following the Covid pandemic), and to broaden the mental health services we can offer to schools.”
David Bradley, Chief Executive of South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and ICB Partner Member for Mental Health said: “Supporting the mental health and emotional wellbeing of children and young people is absolutely vital to them achieving their full potential and living happier healthier lives. By all of us in south east London health system working together as set out in this plan we will be able to confront rising demand, address inequality of access and care, and keep more children and young people out of crisis.”