What steps it is taking to ensure the effectiveness of (a) targets, (b) indicators and (c) measures on infant mental health in existing per…

Scotland set challenging targets (now standards) to ensure faster access to child and adolescent mental health services as well as psychological therapies for all ages within 18 weeks from referral to treatment. This was undertaken to improve access to mental health services in recognition of the valuable contribution such therapies can have in treating a wide range of mental illness and this includes treatment for infant mental health issues.

These mental health waiting times standards have been included within the Local Delivery Plan Guidance for 2016-17. The inclusion of the mental health waiting times standards will require Boards to develop concise plans focusing on reducing waiting times and on improving access to mental health services within each board in line with local need, including infant mental health services. The plans should include an assessment of the level of access currently provided by the board and with the anticipated level of need locally, including benchmarking with other boards in Scotland.
A child and adolescent mental health (CAMH) balanced scorecard is published by Information Services Division Scotland on a quarterly basis. It allows comparisons between boards on a range of performance measures for these services. The data is collected from a CAMHS benchmarking toolkit. This was created in response to commitment 9 of the mental health strategy. A specialist CAMHS service (Tier 4 CAMHs) data set is also used and this was created in relation to commitment 12. Scottish Government is working to refine these measures and to create an overarching National specialist mental health service key performance indicator suite that will contain measures appropriate to CAMHS as well as other mental health services.