Minister of State Mary Butler has "we want to make sure get this right" when it comes to plans to reform CAMHS.
Ms Butler told RTÉ radio’s Today show that following on the Maskey report she had asked the HSE for a national audit of CAMHS’s prescribing practices, and she also asked the Mental Health Commission to expand the scope of Dr Susan Finnerty’s review.
An interim report was received five months ago, she said, so she had not been surprised by the findings of the final report published this week.
“My main concerns and my real concerns, I suppose, are around governance, the lack of it in many areas, the fact that we don't have a standardised service and the lack of clinical leadership, which is really, really profound.”
It was essential that the in-depth reports were as wide-ranging as possible, she said. “We never had this information before. I knew from listening on the ground, from meeting teams, CAMHS teams, from meeting families, from meeting staff, that there was genuine concerns in relation to CAMHS, notwithstanding the very long waiting lists that we have.”
When it was pointed out that the Children’s Rights Alliance had completed two reports highlighting the issues within CAMHS, so she could not say she did not know the problems, the Ms Butler said that information from all 75 CAMHS teams had not been available previously.
“We never had the information where all 75 CAMHS teams in the country co-operated with an audit and a review from the HSE and the Mental Health Commission.
"We never had the information in relation to standard operating procedures, whether they were being followed. I never had the information to hand in relation to the make up of each individual CAMHS team because eight out of the CHOs, the community health organisations work off a paper basis.
“I don't accept I did nothing about it. I was the first minister ever to instigate these comprehensive reports. And I do think it's important to see, because the main risk that I was concerned about, notwithstanding the waiting list that we had a year and a half ago, was in relation to what we saw as a result of the Maskey report, the overprescribing of young people.
"And I was reassured by the Mental Health Commission's report this week that the issues around prescribing practices identified in the Maskey report has not been identified in other parts of the country and also the HSE have released the findings from their national audit this morning at 10:00 this morning, and their audit also did not find evidence of systemic overprescribing.”
She said she had increased the budget for mental health care for young people. “You asked me what have I done in relation to mental health? I have increased the budget by €220 million by 20 percent, which was badly needed. And also I have increased the amount of people working in CAMHS by 50 whole time equivalents.
“I do think it's important that people realise that the amount of referrals into CAMHS in the last two years have increased by 33 per cent. And as a result, we have seen the waiting list doubling in the last three years and the teams working in CAMHS's last year saw 21 per cent more referrals and issue 225,000 appointments.
“Access to CAMHS is a huge issue because what we're not seeing is equality of service across the CAMHS and community health organisations which is as low as 40 percent in some areas, as high as 80 percent in other areas, which is a grave concern for many, many families.”
The Minister also pointed out that she had appointed a national clinical lead for mental health, Dr. Amanda Burke, and also secured an assistant national lead taking up the post in September.
“We have established a new National Office for Child and Youth Mental Health within the HSE.”
Ms Butler pointed out that there are 75 CAMHS teams in place, with 818 staff, 80 consultant psychiatrists working across those 75 teams. “We are currently looking at the situation to see if we would be better off having less teams, better staffed and asking parents to travel that little bit longer, making sure they would have the support they need when they get there due to the fact that we do have issues in relation to staffing.”
However, it was important to ensure that there were no unintended consequences from any changes
“We want to make sure we get this right.”
