Children and young people currency development project

The Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) Project was commissioned by the Department of Health in October 2011.

This work will support the delivery of recommendations set out in Future in Mind and the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health to improve the payment system to support better treatment and outcomes for children and young people accessing mental health services by 2020/21.

The final CAMHS payment by results pilot project report proposed to group children and young people seeking mental health support into three super groups: getting advice, getting help, getting more help, and a further 19 needs-based groupings.

The report also recommended the groupings be developed and tested for possible use as a currency model. A currency is a consistently defined way of grouping healthcare into units that are clinically similar and have broadly similar resource use.

Testing and development

Ten pilot sites are collecting data as part of this project.  This data collection will allow the 19 needs-based groupings to be developed and tested, with expert oversight provided by the children and young people’s mental health currency development steering group.

In particular, it is hoped to establish:

  • whether a broadly similar resource is used to meet the needs of children and young people that have the same grouping assigned to them;
  • whether the groups are clinically meaningful and useful to commissioners and providers.

Pilot sites

These 10 pilot sites will be submitting data on a monthly basis from April 2017 to March 2018 as part of this project:

1. Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
2. Dorset Healthcare University NHS Foundation Trust
3. East London NHS Foundation Trust
4. North East London NHS Foundation Trust
5. North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS Trust
6. Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust
7. Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust
8. South Staffordshire and Shropshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
9. Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust
10a. Young Persons Advisory Service (YPAS), Liverpool
10b. Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust

NHS England will publish its final report on the project over the summer of 2018.

Contact us

Please email any questions, feedback or suggestions or for details of the steering group membership to: england.camhsproject@nhs.net