The transformation of children and young people’s mental health is led locally.  This means local professionals from across the NHS, public health, children’s services in local authorities, education and youth justice working together with children, young people and their families to design and provide the best possible services for their locality.

To support this local leadership and accountability, NHS England asked Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) to work with commissioners and providers across health, social care, education and youth justice and the voluntary sectors, to develop local transformation plans for Children and Young People’s Mental Health (CYPMH).

Local transformation plans were first published in 2015 and cover the whole of England. They set out how local services will invest resources to improve children and young people’s mental health across the “whole system”. These plans are ‘living documents’ and local areas are asked to refresh, and CCGs to republish them, on CCG websites every year.

Key elements to local transformation plans

Local areas decide the exact content and priority of each plan in collaboration with children, young people and their families as well as providers and commissioners. The Local Transformation Plan provides the information that Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships (ST) and Integrated Care Systems (ICS) can use to develop their ambitions to improve CYPMH services in their local NHS Long Term Plan, which is created by local NHS organisations and councils together to improve health and care.

Plans should:

• ensure transparency – by declaring current and planned activity, resources and investment. These are based on the needs of the local population and providers must declare what services they provide, including staff numbers, skills and roles, waiting times and access to information.
• demonstrate service transformation – through a clear description of existing services and the range and choice of improved support they aim to provide including, where appropriate, implementation of Mental Health Support Teams and Waiting Time Pilots. Plans should evidence collaborative practice with children, young people and families and involving schools; the use of evidence-based interventions; and regular feedback of outcome monitoring to children, young people and families in session and supervision.
• improve data and IT infrastructure – by flowing data to the MHSDS Mental Health Services Dataset (MHSDS) which demonstrates outputs and outcomes mandated in the information Standards Notice, published in 2015
• monitor improvement – via an action plan and key performance indicators that track improvement. Plans should be signed off by local governance systems including Health and Wellbeing Boards.  Through refreshing their plans CCGs should engage with other local commissioners, including schools and colleges, providers and children and young people so they can report on progress on the previous year(s) and to support delivery of existing and future plans.