Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services

Part of 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:52 pm on 13 December 2017.

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Photo of Leanne Wood Leanne Wood Plaid Cymru 2:52, 13 December 2017

I've been raising the issue of CAMHS waiting lists for some time. Recently, the First Minister wrote to me explaining the reasons behind the changes in the way that these waiting lists were measured and published, explaining that some local health boards were wrongly including referrals of children and young people to local primary mental health support services in their specialist CAMHS data submissions, and local primary mental health support services also have a 28-day target for access to assessment and interventions, but this is reported and measured separately. However, this isn't quite accurate—it isn't possible to break down the published data for this service by age group. This means we have no idea how long children are waiting for these services. Do you have any plans to publish this data to allow greater scrutiny of this Government's performance in terms of child and adolescent mental health?