Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:13 pm on 19 October 2021.
Well, I thank Sarah Murphy for that, Llywydd. It gives me a chance just to reaffirm again the principle of de-escalation as one of the fundamental drivers of the way we provide services for young people. We should be aiming to intervene at the lowest possible point in order to address their needs rather than allowing those needs to escalate to a point where only an admission to a mental health facility is sufficient to respond to them.
The pilot of the CAMHS in-reach service was very positive; I know that it was positively regarded by the committee in the last Senedd that looked at the evaluation. And it's on the basis of it that the Welsh Government has agreed £5 million of funding to allow local health boards to roll out the pilots from those local authorities where it had been first deployed, so that it is available everywhere; £4 million of that £5 million has now been agreed with LHBs over the summer, and they are now in the business of recruiting people to do so. The CAMHS in-reach project will succeed if it does what Sarah Murphy said: if it allows more young people to receive the help they need earlier in those needs, to reduce the number of people who end up, as she pointed out, needing admission to a mental health facility in the local health board area that she represents.