NHFT Deputy Medical Director discusses children’s mental health in Parliamentary committee
Dr Sachin Sankar, NHFT's Deputy Medical Director for Children's Services, has told a Parliamentary committee how successes with young people's mental health care in the East Midlands could help to improve services across the country.
Dr Sankar gave evidence to a Health and Social Care Committee hearing on children and young people's mental health at the Houses of Parliament.
The committee is part of a joint Education and Health and Social Care Committee enquiry examining mental health support and services provided in education and community settings for children and young people up to the age of 25. Its aim is to understand how this support is integrated with specialist child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) and other NHS services.
Dr Sankar is a Consultant Child Psychiatrist at NHFT's The Burrows and The Sett CAMHS inpatient wards as well as Clinical Lead for the East Midlands CAMHS Collaborative.
The collaborative represents NHS CAMHS providers and charity partners across the region and has been recognised nationally for its transformation of community-based mental health services for children and young people. This has seen a significant reduction in CAMHS inpatient admissions and lengths of stay in hospital while driving down waiting lists, earning the collaborative national wins in the Health Service Journal Awards and NHS Excellence Awards.
Giving evidence to the Parliamentary committee on 2 September, Dr Sankar was asked about the success of the East Midlands programme and gave his expert opinion on how this partnership model could provide a template to unlock joined-up working in the health and care system around the country.
The committee also discussed how referral processes for children and young people with mental health difficulties could be improved, and how the government could better support the missing middle of children who need help but are not considered unwell enough to meet the criteria for CAMHS support.
During the hearing, Dr Sankar stressed the importance of neighbourhood working, where local health and care providers work together to build services around the needs of their communities. He also emphasised that developing a comprehensive wraparound offer of community CAMHS services should have the ultimate goal of reducing the need for hospital inpatient care - ensuring young people get the help they need closer to their homes, families and support networks.
Dr Sankar said: "It was an enormous privilege to be invited to give evidence to the Health and Social Care Committee and to get that recognition for the work we have done in NHFT and the East Midlands Alliance to transform CAMHS provision.
"We have worked hard to improve mental health care for children and young people in Northamptonshire and across the region, and it's good to know that some of the things we have achieved can be used to influence national policy and decision-making in the future."
Giving evidence alongside Dr Sankar to the Health and Social Care Committee were Professor Subodh Dave, President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and Rebecca Gray, Director of the NHS Alliance Mental Health Network.