Wakefield Child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS)
Overview
The service offers support and treatment for children and young people, aged up to 18 years old, who are experiencing difficulties with their mental health and wellbeing. The services are based at Airedale Health Centre and Drury Lane and Wellbeing Centre in Wakefield.
The Trust carried out a pilot to review the NHS friends and family test (FFT), the test used to capture feedback following an episode of care, with young people. The pilot aim was to increase the feedback the Trust receive because it was identified that CAMHS had particularly low responses or that the only responses received were negative. As the negative response did not provide any further explanation more work to increase feedback took place.
The Trust wrote a scope of how to work together with the CAMHS teams to improve feedback. A project group was pulled together with services leads and workers from all CAMHS services. The group met and discussed:
- where they are now in each area with involvement
- how they could work together to improve and increase the FFT responses
- where they can share good practice
- identify ways to continue involvement activity in their services
Wakefield CAMHS agreed to be a pilot site to see how they can improve gathering young people’s views and ask why they don’t complete the FFT cards.
Who did you consult with and what did you ask?
It was agreed to run a variety of methods for involvement by holding drop-in sessions at Create Café, Wakefield and an online event via Microsoft Teams, plus have a display in the clinic waiting rooms for people to read and engage with.
Current service users and families were invited by case workers to attend either the drop-in sessions or attend the online meeting.
We asked:
- if they knew what the friends and family test was,
- what it looked like,
- what they liked about it,
- what would they change and if they had completed it or not, and
- how they would further like to gain feedback about their involvement.
What did they tell you?
From the drop-in sessions and online event, the following feedback was provided:
- Most had heard of FFT, what it was for and had completed it. Another hadn’t used it but stated they would be happy to fill one out.
- One person said they didn’t know what the FFT was for. They had seen the cards/ forms in the waiting room but didn’t notice the posters/ leaflets.
- One person was unsure if their parent had completed it for them and another carer said they completed with their daughter, when they were both at the appointment.
- They thought the card was colourful, quick to complete and well-presented but the posters/leaflets contained too much information.
- They suggested using bullet points for key information, to add a link to the website and to signpost to staff.
- For alternate ways to ask FFT questions they didn’t think an email was right as this might be missed. They suggested a text message was a good idea with a link to complete the questions. They asked if you are going to text – let us know so that we know it is a real NHS text and use the Trust logo on the links to show it is a trustworthy link.
- Some felt the equality questions could be too personal for some people and they suggested a space to write how you identify instead for the gender section.
- In terms of what happens to their feedback on FFT cards they said a poster explaining what had been done with the information and how they can continue to give feedback and what has or can’t be changed as a result. They stated not to put everything online as a display gives opportunity to socialise and ask about the information in the waiting areas of CAMHS.
What did you do?
As a result of feedback received from a service user during the engagement event in September regarding the options on the Friends and Family Test cards for gender, this had now been changed to a free text box so that the respondent can write in how they identify in the gender section. New cards have been edited, reprinted and distributed to CAMHS.
Wakefield CAMHS are due to send out an invite letter to all young people inviting them to take part in future engagement events. This exercise will create a database of young people who would be interested in taking part in engagement within CAMHS that could be approached for different pieces of work. Letters will be distributed by the service and those that respond will be entered into a free prize draw for an Amazon voucher.
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