Consultancy Support to Develop a Regional Approach to Children and Young People’s Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health

One of the largest and most vital tasks for any region is to foster positive emotional mental health and wellbeing in children and young people. Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan Regional Partnership Board wish to respond to this challenge through the development of an integrated model of care for children and young people with emotional wellbeing and mental health difficulties.

Responsibility for the development, implementation and delivery of this model will be led by the Cardiff and Vale Regional Partnership Board. Their vision is an integrated model designed around the needs of children and young people and their families, that focuses on an early intervention and preventative approach to fostering positive emotional mental health and wellbeing across organisations, but that also encompasses appropriate graduated responses to needs of increasing severity up to requiring a safe accommodation placement.

The Children’s Commissioner for Wales, Sally Holland, outlined in her report No Wrong Door the need for all regions to develop a partnership-wide integrated model of support for children and young people with emotional mental health and wellbeing needs, which includes partnership agreement on how to commission specialist support and placements.

Cardiff and Vale of Glamorgan have shared areas of good practice with the Children’s Commissioner, but have also identified areas where there is a need to develop or improve integrated working arrangements and positively change the experience of children and young people who access services.

Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan RPB is seeking to secure external expertise through professional consultancy to enable us to articulate and drive forward the vision for children and young people across the region and to enable the partnership to make the changes that will deliver it. This will include a desktop analysis and partnership playback of current working arrangements to enable us to identify ways in which we can improve outcomes for children and young people with emotional wellbeing and mental health issues as a partnership.

The desktop analysis should be a time-limited activity that enables development and implementation of models that bring us closer to integrated delivery. The approach should be one of appreciative inquiry, enabling us to identify our strengths as individual organisations and as a partnership. It must also identify opportunities for improvement and the means to deliver the changes required.

The partnership is keen to learn from and emulate best national and international practice that enables services to dissolve the boundaries and rebuild around the child and their family/support arrangements.

It is anticipated that this work will benefit from a phased approach as follows:

• Identification of a deliverable integrated model and put executive plans in place where needed.
• Development of a local approach to commissioning specialist accommodation where needed.
• Implementation of integrated model and approach to specialist commissioning.