WATCH: Aberdeen to get mental health help centre for kids & young people

A one-stop-shop for mental health services is being created in Aberdeen to support children and young people across the Granite City and Shire.

NHS Grampian’s using £1million of new Scottish Government funding to do up the disused Links Unit at the City Hospital.

Child and Adolescent Mental Health staff who work across the Aberdeen city and Aberdeenshire areas are currently spread across 3 sites in Aberdeen. The new Centre of Excellence will bring these three CAMHS services for children aged 0-18 years together under one roof.

The Rowan Centre in Moray, which is already a one service CAMHS department for patients aged 0-18 years, will be closely linked to the new Centre of Excellence.

NHS Grampian said it has already begun working with designers on the redevelopment of the building. The facility will be over 2000 m² across two floors and will boast 23 interview rooms and 5 group rooms. It will include an education and resource room with video conference facilities enabling closer working with education, social work and other specialist partners.

Jane Fletcher, Head of Hosted Mental Health & Learning Disability Services for NHS Grampian, said: “This is fantastic news and a pivotal moment in our work to redesign a modern Child and Adolescent Mental Health service for Grampian.

“The move to the City Hospital is part of a redesign of the whole system to develop an innovative and reactive CAMHS service that ensures care is delivered in an efficient, effective, and consistent way across Grampian.

“There is a lot of hard work ahead but we aim to have the new centre open by spring next year. That’s an ambitious timescale but we hope it demonstrates just how serious we are to reshaping the service. It’s a vital step forwards for patients and staff and will help us continue to provide the support and assistance some of our most vulnerable patients need and deserve.”

She continued: “The population of Grampian has swelled by more than 15,000 since 2011 – that’s the equivalent of a new town in our area, roughly equivalent to somewhere the size of Inverurie.

“While that population increase is spread across our whole area, the demand it places on specialist, pan Grampian services like mental health is huge.

“The new CAHMS Centre of Excellence is a key part of our strategy to tackle that significant additional demand. By providing services in a single setting, not only is it more efficient – it means people are able to benefit from easier access to specialists and get access to the right type of care that they need, from the right professional at the right time’.

Dr Lynne Taylor, CAMHS Clinical Director, said: “Perhaps most crucially for patients, the new single site will allow children to see the same clinical team, and access the support they need, throughout their treatment irrespective of their age or where they live.

“One of the main aims at the outset of the redesign was to remove the transitions families’ experience when moving between child and adolescent services and between different hospital sites. That can be unsettling for patients and by removing transitions, it means that children and young people can maintain the relationships, trust and confidence they’ve built up with staff.

“In Grampian we have a really skilled and dedicated CAMHS staff and this will help them continue to be a source of locally accessible expertise to families, and to offer targeted, specialist care where it is needed. Our focus is to ensure patients get access to staff with the correct skills that are to be able to address their mental health difficulty.

“Having all staff who cover Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire in a new dedicated Centre of Excellence, with close links with Moray, enables us to deliver the individual care required in a more responsive, safe and efficient way. The new building also allows us the space to recruit additional staff which is very much needed to help us more effectively meet rising demand.

“As our referral rates continue to increase, the move to the City Hospital also affords the service the opportunity to find new and innovative ways to deliver care. As part of this move, we are developing exciting new ways of working from the City Hospital, such as virtual clinics and innovative group work where appropriate. Our overall aim is to increase patient choice and accessibility to CAMHS and to make the building a welcoming environment that both patients and staff can be proud of."