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Appendix G. Greater Glasgow Health Board - Looked After and Accommodated Children Mental Health Team
Topics: Child and Maternal Health; Mental Health
Background
A multi-disciplinary team, the Looked After and Accommodated Mental Health Team ( LAAMHT) was established to provide a mental health service to looked after and accommodated children and young people aged less than 18 years.
Funding allocation
The pilot was allocated £930,000
Aim(s)
The service offered by the multi-disciplinary team has three themes:
1. To provide a system for providing mental health support to those involved in the systems of care.
2. To provide an early intervention service routinely to all children entering care.
3. Focussed interventions for individuals, foster families and carers.
Methodology
A variety of activities that related to the three themes of the team took place. These included:
1. To provide a system for providing mental health support to those involved in the systems of care.
Considerable activity took place, including establishing links with children's panel reporters, establishing links with educational psychology and training with foster carers, child health nursing staff and social work students.
2. To provide an early intervention service routinely to all children entering care.
This part of the service provided a routine psychological assessment for all children entering care and provides recommendation regarding their social, emotional and cognitive development.
3. Focussed interventions for individuals, foster families and carers
This was the focus of much work and involved advancing a best fit model. Key features of the model include community CAMHS teams being the entry point for mental health referrals for LAA children and young people; case management and intervention decided according to a number of rules of thumb including continuity, stability of placement and complexity and an evaluation of views from key stakeholders concerning the care pathway and service provision.
Key Results
- For children and young people aged 0-18 years old, the introduction of the service witnessed a two-fold increase in referrals accepted between 2003-4 and 2004-5 and a three-fold increase in the number of returns. This reflected an increase in staffing and the service plan extending to move beyond service provision for the east sector of Glasgow and Dumbarton
- For under 12s, there was an increase in the number of new notifications between 2004-5 and 2005-6 of 22 children.
- For over 12s, it was noted that the early interventions service development has been limited and consultation with young people was scheduled to take place to facilitate development of the model.
Conclusions
The introduction of the service has seen large increases in both the number of referrals and the number of returns, highlighting the effectiveness of service provision to looked after and accommodated children in Greater Glasgow.
In addition, the team was continually engaged in a process of service evaluation, development and improvement. For example, in developing a foster care intervention package and consolidating links with other services.
For some groups, such as the over 12s, service development has been more limited. However, this had been noted and subsequent actions were scheduled to take place to attempt to address this.
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