Community Forensic Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (including Secure Outreach) for London - Stakeholder Engagement Event

Tender description

NHS England would like to invite stakeholders to attend a Stakeholder Engagement Event which will inform plans to commission a new Community Forensic Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (FCAMHS), including Secure Outreach, for London. The new service forms part of a national initiative to develop England-wide specialist child and adolescent mental health services for high risk young people with complex needs and that will be delivered within clearly defined geographical areas at regional and sub-regional level. The service in London will be managed locally by NHS England London's Specialised Commissioning team, in partnership with the London Health in Justice team. The service will have the functions of a specialist Child and Adolescent Mental Health (CAMH) service, including secure outreach. It will be available to all agencies within its regional catchment, and is intended to supplement and inform existing local and other cross-agency provision (e.g. CAMHS, social services, youth offending teams, prisons, courts, education) which may have contact with risky young people, including those in contact with the youth justice system who have mental health and/or neurodevelopmental difficulties (including learning disabilities and autism). The small, highly-qualified multidisciplinary FCAMHS teams are intended to function on several levels in all environments: • As a resource for information • As a means of formal consultation • As a service providing specialist assessments and interventions in particularly high risk and/or complex cases • As a training resource for front-line workers • As a means of informing and developing strategic links between mental health services, the youth justice system and other agencies both locally and nationally. The population eligible for such services is deliberately broad covering all young people under 18 about whom there are questions regarding mental health or neurodevelopmental difficulties including learning disability and autism who: • present high risk of harm towards others and about whom there is major family or professional concern • and/or are in contact with the youth justice system • OR about whom advice about the suitability of an appropriate secure setting is being sought because of complexity of presentation and severe, recurrent self-harm and or challenging behaviour which cannot be managed elsewhere; in such cases, where non-secure in-patient services or locality CAMHS teams are usually extensively involved, the input from the secure outreach service is likely to be advisory or consultative rather than requiring direct clinical involvement.