Mental health service transitions for young people

Practice example - Joint training and service planning for practitioners: Peterborough

Purpose

To improve young people’s experience of the transition process.

The transition group in Peterborough has been running for over two years. It meets every two or three months, and involves the early intervention in psychosis service (CAMEO) and the local CAMHS team to ensure the smooth transition of young people under the age of 18 with psychosis or possible psychosis. The teams share a culture of working with families and active engagement of young people.The group is open and has also been attended by youth offending and drug services.

Much of what the group does is case based (23 young people in 18 months) but they have also shared training events, and supported some of the research projects within CAMEO.

The group have collected systematic feedback from families and young people. This has been generally positive but has also outlined areas for development including the use of written information and thinking about how long the transition process should take (some saying not too long for parallel working). Young people have reported a greater sense of the teams working together.

Future possibilities include involving other parts of adult services, and taking forward models of youth services such as Orygen, depending on commissioning and strategic developments.

Resources

Meet for around 90 minutes every two months. Usually four or five professionals across the two teams, plus others from youth offending or drug services.