young person 2 istock photoA new Commission has been created to improve mental healthcare provision and "look at what really matters" to children and young people who depend upon child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS).

The Commission, chaired by Baroness Claire Tyler, is sponsored by the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Faculty of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, along with Young Minds and the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Coalition. It will aim to employ a values-based approach to support decision making through good process. Employing such an approach, involving the young people themselves and their parents and carers, along with referrers and partner agencies, CAMH service providers, commissioners and managers, the Commission will research and report what is really needed and how to deliver it.

"I am delighted to be chairing this important new Commission which will look at how children and young people's mental health services can be both commissioned and delivered in ways which reflect what really matters to everyone involved, most particularly the children and young people themselves,” said Baroness Tyler.

"A values-based approach in the field of child and adolescent mental health has the potential to change young lives for the better and give them hope for the future."

Its final recommendations will include:
• Recommendations for service providers, commissioners and managers on improvements to the current service, based on updated core values
• Recommendations training requirements for service providers, commissioners and managers
• Recommendations for the education and training of CAMHS staff
• Recommendations for key UK health organisations including Department of Health, NHS England and the devolved assemblies’ Health Services and Departments of Health.

Members of the Commission will be drawn from across all sectors and from the different jurisdictions of the UK.