The strategy focuses on early intervention to address health problems to ensure the underlying causes of poor behaviour are tackled before problems become serious or entrenched. It will also ensure that young people already in the system have their health problems dealt with more effectively.
Key issues from the briefing discussed the importance to:
• Highlight the importance that everyone who works with children has access to training to help them spot mental health issues early.
• Promote specialist interventions such as Youth Justice Liaison projects to divert more children from the justice system to appropriate services, and therefore reduce offending and re-offending.
• Ensure all children receiving a community or custodial sentence have a healthcare plan, developed alongside their sentence plan, to address their specific needs
• Improve access to health services on resettlement, and ensure young people register with a GP.
• The strategy argues that Children’s Trust Boards have to take the lead in engaging health and other mainstream services at a local level to improve outcomes for children and young people at risk of offending and re-offending.
Delivering on this responsibility is important for all agencies. It is as important for those providing services for adults (for example, parents with mental health or substance misuse problems) as for those helping children.
It also as important for services with a focus on wellbeing and safety (such as Local Safeguarding Children Boards) as it is for those concerned explicitly with offending (such as Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships and Local Criminal Justice Boards).
Highlighted and relevant sections from the strategy include:
• Learning from the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) and Early Intervention in Psychosis (EIP) programmes is informing commissioning and the development of evidence-informed approaches.
• In one of the pathfinder sites for IAPT, the programme has been adapted to meet the needs of children and young people, with promising practice emerging in relation to providing early and timely access to treatment. Through the New Horizons strategy, 56 the Government is supporting improvements in the service for young people making the transition from CAMHS to AMHS. It will do so through joint work by the Department of Health (DH) and the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) to develop resources that support local service development, the dissemination of good practice, joint working between PCTs and local authorities, and support from the Care Quality.
• Work is underway to strengthen the links between drug treatment services and mental health services and to improve arrangements for young people making the transition from the secure estate to the community and moving on to adult services.
• A report is expected in mid-2010 from the joint thematic review of the management within YOTs of alcohol use and offending. This review, led by the Care Quality Commission, is part of the Inspection of Youth Offending programme, led by HMI Probation. Its findings will underpin practice developments.
To read the report in full visit the Department of Health’s website.