Current status: Answered by Maree Todd on 19 May 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what progress each NHS board has made in ensuring that notifications of referrals that are not accepted include a direct re-referral to a more appropriate service, in line with recommendation 13 of the 2018 report, Rejected Referrals Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.
We expect NHS Boards to follow the National Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) specification, which includes a clear expectation that children and young people whose referral is not accepted for CAMHS are sensitively and appropriately signposted to a more suitable service.
Some of these services are likely to be community based and we continue to invest £15 million per annum in funding to these supports, which will continue through the local government finance settlement from 2025-26. Local authorities report that nearly 83,000 children, young people and their family members accessed community-based mental health support between July 2023 and March 2024. Alongside this, we are ensuring access to counselling services in all secondary schools, and continue to support local authorities with £16million a year.
Appropriate redirection and alternative support will vary across NHS Boards depending on the services available locally, and the needs of the child or young person involved. While we have made significant progress in improving mental health and wellbeing services for children and young people since 2018, we continue to work closely with Boards to understand the reasons for non-accepted referrals and to ensure that the criteria in the CAMHS specification are being met.
Additionally, Public Health Scotland has started publishing data from the CAMHS and Psychological Therapies National Dataset (CAPTND), including referrals to CAMHS by sex, age and SIMD as well as reasons for referral not being accepted. Health Boards are also working with PHS and Directors of eHealth to enable the collection and publication of additional information this year.
CAPTND is still under development, and any inferences or conclusions drawn from this data should be treated with caution. Work is ongoing between NHS Boards, Public Health Scotland, and the Scottish Government to improve the consistency and completeness of the information.