Welcome to CAMHS Needs Assessment

 

This interactive tool has been commissioned by the National CAMHS Support Service and developed by the Durham University Mapping Unit with support from HASCAS.

The tool has been designed to enable CAMHS Partnerships, PCTs and Local Authorities to prepare a needs assessment which reflects the mental health needs of the children and families in their area in a form that will support ongoing development and monitoring of CAMH Development Strategies (and in the case of PCTs meet the requirements set out in their star ratings for an audited needs assessment). We recognise that many partnerships have detailed and effective needs assessments in place however some have found either the development or upkeep of such a document problematic and time consuming. This tool is provided in response to these requests. We would strongly encourage this to be used as a partnership tool however it has been produced to be able to reflect the needs of both PCT and LA populations within a partnership where those boundaries will differ. The key features of the tool are that it:

  • takes nationally available demographic data and applies prevalence rates to build up a local picture of need;
  • provides an opportunity for CAMHS Partnerships, PCTs and Local Authorities to provide their own data and generate reports on groups of children and young people with specific needs or characteristics;
  • uses activity data already supplied to the CAMHS Mapping Service to generate comparisons of expected and actual activity;
  • uses staffing data already supplied to generate a staffing benchmark against the standard set out in the National Service Framework for Children.

A list of the sources of prevalence data are set out at Appendix A. All nationally sourced population data has been obtained from the Office for National Statistics 2001 Census / 2005 mid-year estimates. The needs assessment tool has been updated as of January 2007 and now offers

  • Access to 2005/06 CAMHS Mapping data
  • Many different needs assessments can be created and maintained by one person
  • A needs assessment may cover more than one PCT or LA.
  • Use ONS population data or provide your own

At this stage it is not possible to provide some analyses of prevalence data, for example the age profiles used in the Census do not enable detailed application of the prevalence rates for children and young people from different ethnic communities. Additional functionality will be added to the tool over time.

To complete it you will need the following local information:

  • Most recent information on the number of children looked after broken down by residential and foster placement
  • Most recent information on number of young offenders with sub category of number in custody

The tool should take no more than half a day to complete. Please take a few minutes to provide us with some feedback when you have completed your needs assessment - this will help us to refine the tool to even better meet the needs of your CAMHS Partnership, PCT or LA. Feedback can be given on-line.

To start using the tool you need to register and then enter data into the data summary  before generating a report.