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Summary of report content

Healthwatch Stoke on Trent devised a project called while "While we were waiting" this project was aimed to better understand the experiences of patients and families whilst waiting for CAHMS. There was four methods of information gathering, a focus group(20 attendees), semi-structured interview(5 participants), cultural animation(13 attendees), and web page(8 responses). The key themes across the report were, communication, confidentiality, agency cooperation, diagnosis, social and environmental factors, relationships, and information provisions. The project found that: diagnosis sometimes detracted from understanding and delivering for the needs of the child, communication was inconsistent between education services and health providers and cooperation must be built between these agencies, consistency is needed across services such as school nurses, education staff have a lack of understanding or access to specialist advice, parents sometimes have preexisting conditions that are undiagnosed that can affect outcomes, the effects of stigmatisation cannot be underestimated and the labeling of children can affect the care they recieve, some teachers are unaware of how they can support and do not have a support network to assist them with this, there are still questions around what support a parent can receive and how they request this. The report made nine recommendations: further engagement is advised as there are still data gaps perhaps through educational psychology, good practice across service areas should be shared, there should be more promotion into tier 2 services for staff and parents, have specialist support from CAHMS for mental health issues, work in partnership with parents and carers, all staff to be supported with data protection, simple consent boxes on CAHMS forms, SENCO's to be updated and made aware throughout treatment and diagnosis, more work to be done around the preventative agenda in schools, parents to be made aware of what they can expect, further promotion of the local offer, online resources to be made available around mental health, ensure consistent channels of communication between staff and parents long term, build community capacity to empower parents to engage with schools.

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