Welcome to better health

CHILDREN and young people in Oldham will be able to access more specialist mental health care following a £2.7million investment from the Department of Health.

Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust has joined a collaborative of NHS Trusts to deliver a project to improve access to psychological therapies for youngsters over the next four years.

It’s one of only three schemes in the country which will provide existing therapists and clinical leaders working in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) with innovative, enhanced training to provide more specialist care to young people and children.

The programme will be led by Salford Cognitive Therapy Training Centre and will focus on children from three to eight years with behavioural problems and and children and eight to 18 year-olds with depression or anxiety disorders. Dr Deborah McNally, acting assistant director of the Salford Cognitive Therapy Training Centre, said: “This project aims to transform the quality of mental health services for children and young people by ensuring we detect and treat mental health problems as early as possible.”

The group says it will achieve its aims by working in partnership with children and teenagers to shape their local services, increasing the workforce to deliver evidence-based practice, and by using session by session outcome monitoring to help the therapist and client work together.

Data will be collected and analysed in each local area to ensure that children and young people are getting the help they need.