Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government has been working closely with Health Boards to ensure a wide range of actions are in place to reduce waiting lists for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). This includes increasing funding over recent years to expand service capacity and provide over 320 additional staff, and enabling the system to manage over 10,000 additional cases. We are also continuing to support NHS Boards to redesign their services to improve efficiency and access.

Thanks to the hard work and dedication of CAMHS teams across Scotland, national performance against the 18-week CAMHS standard has been sustained for over a year, with 91% of children and young people starting treatment within 18 weeks of referral and one in two children and young people referred to CAMHS start treatment within 6 weeks. Most Health Boards have now eliminated waits of over a year, and the total number of children and young people waiting more than 52 weeks is at its lowest level since June 2015 and now account for only 0.5% of all children and young people waiting.

We do, however, recognise there is more to do. Some young people and families are still waiting too long. We continue to work closely with all Boards, providing enhanced support where performance needs to improve, ensuring Boards have robust improvement plans in place to deliver results.

The Scottish Government is also investing in early intervention and community-based supports, such as school counselling and third-sector services, to support children and young people and their families to address mental health issues earlier in order to reduce demand for specialist CAMHS.