Healthcare Professionals to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Clinicians: Developing a Generic Profession

Abstract

anarkshire Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) is a multidisciplinary community-based service in the central belt of Scotland for the children, young people and their families who live within the health board boundaries, a total population of 560,000. The CAMH service is delivered by four community-based teams each serving a defined geographical district. The current CAMH service has a staff complement of 29.6 WTE and a budget of £1,370,000, which represents 3.2% of the overall mental health budget. Child and adolescent mental health clinicians currently make up 15 WTE of the CAMHS staff group. This article describes how the service has continued to develop in spite of the significant national shortages of specialist child mental health professionals in all disciplines. It particularly focuses on the emergence of this new generic professional group whose professional backgrounds include specialist nursing, occupational therapy and social work. The child and adolescent mental health clinician structure offers: ■ an integrated career pathway for CAMHS professionals ■ retention as clinicians with increasing seniority, rather than a progression within a professional discipline which can only offer managerial positions ■ a framework of uniform pay, terms and L conditions which values and rewards the disparate professional training, qualifications and experience of senior clinicians ■ continuing professional development to consolidate changing specialist roles in order to meet more complex service demands.