This week the Mental Health Commission released its interim report on the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (Camhs).
It made for damning reading, painting a picture of a vital service that is not fit for purpose.
Waiting lists that see children not getting the timely care they need or even ageing out the system, children getting “lost” in the paper-based, overloaded system and clinical governance issues dominate while words such as “confusion”, “frustration”, “unsafe”, “patchwork of cover”, and “absence of care plans” paint a picture of a mental health service that is simply not serving many of the children and teenagers it is aimed at.
For many, access to care is a postcode lottery.
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Two mothers talk to In the News about their experience with Camhs and how they feel it failed their children.
Kitty Holland, Irish Times social affairs correspondent and Roisin Clark, interim chief executive of Mental Health Reform, an advocacy group representing organisations throughout the country, explain the background and what the report means for Camhs and the HSE.
In the News; presented by Bernice Harrison, produced by Declan Conlon and Suzanne Brennan
