Abstract
Adolescent in-patient units within the NHS generally provide a broad range of services to large catchment areas and populations. ‘Pine Lodge’ Young People's Centre in Chester has piloted a new emergency admission service which it has run in conjunction with its existing treatment service. This paper sets out to discuss the potential difficulties in providing such a service in the setting of a general purpose adolescent unit; describe the specification of the piloted emergency service; and present the results of monitoring its use and efficacy during the first six months.
Highlights
Centre in Chester has piloted a new emergency admission service which it has run in conjunction with its existing treatment service
Together We Stand (1995) along with the Department of Health and Department for Education (1995) A Handbook on Child and Adolescent Mental Health suggest a four tier service, with in-patient adolescent mental health services placed in the fourth tier, along with highly specialised services such as eating disorder units, forensic units and neuro psychiatrie units
The debate on how to reconcile the need for general purpose in-patient units and the need for specialist in-patient and out-patient services, with limited resources, will coAnttin'Puein.e Lodge' Young People's Centre (YPC) in Chester we have tried to maintain the role of a general purpose treatment unit, in addition we encourage referrals of adolescents with eating disorders as we have a good success rate with this client group
Summary
Adolescent in-patient units within the NHS generally provide a broad range of services to large catchment areas and populations. There was no quantitative evidence of the level of need for such a service but one or two examples of adolescents having to be admitted to adult psychiatric wards, when no beds were available at the YPC led to the request that we designate two of our 10 beds to meet the need for possible emergency admissions. We met this request with some reluctance, believing the need for such a service was questionable. Few thought this should be provided within existing resources, fearing that such service would detract from an already stretched regional inpatient treatment service. (Chester YPC with 10 beds is the only NHS adolescent in-patient resource serving a catchment area population of approximately 2.5 million.) The result of this debate, with the mixed views expressed, was to try it and see! We agreed to pilot the scheme for six months while closely monitoring its use
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