Community paediatricians’ experience of joint working with Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services: Findings from a British National Survey
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Published version
Author(s)
Ani, C
Ayyash, H
Ogundele, M
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Objectives: Children and young people (CYP) presenting to Paediatric or Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) often have needs spanning medical and psychiatric diagnoses. However, joint working between Paediatrics and CAMHS remains limited. We surveyed community paediatricians in United Kingdom (UK) to inform better strategies to improve joint-working with CAMHS. Methods: We conducted an online survey of community paediatricians through the British Association of Community Child Health (BACCH) on how much joint working they experienced with CAMHS, any hindrances to more collaborative working, and the impact on service users and service provision. This paper is based on thematic analysis of 327 free text comments by the paediatricians. Results: A total of 245 community paediatricians responded to the survey (22% of BACCH members). However, some responses were made on behalf of teams rather than for individual paediatricians. The key themes identified were: a strong support for joint working between Community Paediatrics and CAMHS; an acknowledgement that current levels of joint working were limited; the main barriers to joint working were splintered commissioning and service structures (e.g. where Integrated Care Systems {ICSs} fund different providers to meet overlapping children’s health needs); and the most commonly reported negative impact of non-join working was severely limited access to CAMHS for CYP judged by paediatricians to require mental health support, particularly those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Conclusion: There is very limited joint working between Community Paediatrics and CAMHS in the UK, which is associated with many adverse impacts on service users and providers. A pro-integration strategy that includes joint commissioning of adequately funded Paediatric and CAMHS services that are co-located and within the same health management organisations - is crucial for improving joint-working between Paediatrics and CAMHS.
Date Issued
2022-04-19
Date Acceptance
2022-03-30
ISSN
2399-9772
Publisher
BMJ Publishing Group
Start Page
1
End Page
10
Journal / Book Title
BMJ Paediatrics Open
Volume
6
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2022. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
Identifier
https://bmjpaedsopen.bmj.com/content/6/1/e001381
Subjects
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Pediatrics
Child Psychiatry
Adolescent Health
Health services research
Qualitative research
PRIMARY-CARE
SHORTAGE
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2022-04-19