The NHS should commission the voluntary and community sector providers for non-clinical mental health care to better support children and young people’s mental health, a new report recommends.
Centre for Mental Health’s Bridging the Gap reports on Barnardo’s Inner Resilience and Development (BIRD) Service, a mental health service which supports children and young people with mental health difficulties outside of hospital.
BIRD is a holistic, child focussed intervention that offers timely, tailored care and support to children and young people with mental health problems. It primarily supports those who arrive at emergency departments and do not meet the thresholds to be able to access crisis support from Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). It is offered in four hospitals in the Black Country and one in Merseyside.
The report shows that it improves children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing, helps parents, carers and families to understand their mental health and has the potential to reduce the pressure on NHS services.
The report finds that children and young people who accessed BIRD reported improved mental wellbeing, greater confidence in managing their mental health, and stronger relationships with support workers. 97% reported better wellbeing after using the BIRD service.
Parents, carers, and families observed huge improvements in their children’s mood, behaviour, and ability to cope with school and friendships. They saw clear benefits, such as better communication with their children and young people and improved understanding of their children and young people’s mental health needs.
The report concludes that BIRD has the potential to reduce pressure on emergency departments and CAMHS) crisis teams. Children and young people supported by BIRD were almost eight times less likely to be readmitted within six months, compared to rates reported in the literature.
The report recommends that integrated care boards (ICBs) in England explore the potential to establish an equivalent to BIRD in their areas and commission voluntary and community (VCSE) sector providers for non-clinical mental health support. Barnardo’s support workers were crucial to BIRD’s success and worked with children and young people in a way they found helpful and supportive, demonstrating that voluntary sector collaborations can be best positioned to lead collaborations with the NHS.
It also recommends that ICBs improve the coordination of mental health services to children and young people. Collaborations between partners need to be focussed on the child and include working with their families and schools.
Andy Bell, chief executive at Centre for Mental Health, said: “Children and young people’s mental health has been declining over the last decade, and too many reach crisis point before they can get the right help. The BIRD service demonstrates that non-clinical mental health support can help children and families, preventing or averting crises, and reducing the need for hospital care. We hope that children and young people in all areas of the country will in future benefit from services like BIRD.”
Rukshana Kapasi, Director of Health, Quality and Inclusion at Barnardo’s said: “At Barnardo’s, we know that many children are waiting far too long for NHS mental health support. We also know that children from the poorest families are four times more likely to experience serious mental health difficulties by the age of 11. This cannot be right.
Over the past two years, we’ve worked in partnership with the NHS to develop and deliver Barnardo’s Inner Resilience and Development Service (BIRD). This is a model that provides early, non-clinical support to children and young people before they reach crisis point, achieving real impact.
Partnerships between the NHS and trusted organisations demonstrate what’s possible when we work together to find the right solution. So, if you’re an NHS commissioner or provider looking for cost effective, child-centred services to strengthen mental health support and ease pressures on services like Emergency Departments, this could be your answer.”
