Mental health is as important as physical health. As one young person put it: “It doesn’t mean being happy all the time, but it does mean being able to cope with things.” (CAMHS review, 2008)

Every individual who comes into contact with a child or young person has an affect on his or her mental health and emotional wellbeing. The vision of this strategy is to make children and young people’s mental health and emotional wellbeing ‘EVERYONE’S BUSINESS’.

The Mental Health and Emotional Wellbeing Partnership Board have agreed the following outcomes for Liverpool in partnership with a number of stakeholders including children, young people and families:

• Improved mental health of children, young people and their families
• Improved environments so that children, young people and families can thrive
• Increased Identification of children and young people with early indicators of distress and risk
• Reduction in mild to moderate distress
• Reduction in the development of moderate to severe distress
• Reduction in life-long distress

Through working together, we hope to achieve these for children, young people and their families in Liverpool.

In November 2014, Liverpool Mental health and emotional Wellbeing Partnership Board (MHEWB), launched their 3-year strategy to improve the mental health of children and young people and their families in Liverpool.

Following this launch a national inquiry into child and adolescent mental health services in England took place, and the findings were published in a report called ‘Future in Mind: Promoting, protecting and improving our children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing.’

This report outlines a number of recommendations that every Clinical Commissioning Group in England needs to work towards in partnership with wider stakeholders including local authorities, schools, NHS providers, youth justice, the police, the voluntary and community sector and most importantly children, young people and parents/carers.

In order to meet these recommendations, new funding has been available.  This funding is available for every CCG area to:

1. Build capacity and capability across the system so that we make measurable progress towards closing the health and wellbeing gap and securing sustainable improvements in children and young people’s mental health outcomes by 2020;
2. Roll-out the Children and Young People’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programmes (CYP IAPT) so that by 2018, CAMHS across the country are delivering a choice of evidence-based interventions, adopting routine outcome monitoring and feedback to guide treatment and service design, working collaboratively with children and young people. The additional funding will also extend access to training via CYP IAPT for staff working with children under five and those with autism and learning disabilities;
3. Develop evidence-based community Eating Disorder services for children and young people with capacity in general teams released to improve self-harm and crisis services;
4. Improve perinatal care.

Each CCG within England was asked to submit a five-year transformational plan to outline how they would meet the recommendations within ‘Future in Mind’.  Liverpool submitted their plan in October 2015 and subsequently received new investment to improve the mental health and emotional wellbeing of children, young people and their families in the city. Liverpool’s Plan was underpinned by the original three-year strategy. Both the 2014 -2017 strategy and Transformational Plan should be read together.

We have worked with children, young people and parents/carers to ensure a summarised version of our plan is publicly available.  You can read this version here

***UPDATE January 2019*** 

Part of the NHS assurance framework around the Transformation Plan is that a refreshed plan is produced annually.  The 2018/2019 Transformation Plan Refresh, which can be found here, includes outline progress during the last two years and the next steps for future developments to support children and young people’s mental health and emotional wellbeing.

The 2017/2018 Transformation Plan Refresh can be found here