Carlisle day centre for children with mental health problems to close

A Carlisle day centre for children with mental health problems is to close, health bosses have announced. But they stress that it is part of a wider change that will transform the way care is provided across the county.

They add that it is not a cost-cutting measure and no staff will be lost. Instead they will assess children in different, less formal environments, including home and school.

The Portland Square centre is the base for the Cumbria Partnership’s CAMS (Children and Adolescent Mental Health Service) service.

For the past decade or so part of the building has also been used as a day review centre, where children with mental health problems go to be formally assessed over a period of six to eight weeks.

These sessions involve educational classes in the morning, followed by group work in the afternoon and allow professionals to observe and assess each child.

But the Cumbria Partnership, NHS Foundation Trust, which runs mental health services across the county, believes this system is out-of-date and singles children out as different. It instead wants to focus on less-formal community assessment, working more closely with professionals from schools, social services and education.

It is proposing to close the day centre at the end of March, once the current group has completed the programme, and focus on new methods of assessment.

The CAMS service was one of the areas criticised by the Care Quality Commission in the trust’s annual report, which saw it rated “weak”.

Hilary Fenton, the strategic development lead for CAMS, believes this is largely to do with their approach to dealing with mental health problems in children, which in the past has tended to be reactive rather than proactive.

They now want to change that, as well as eliminating the discrepancies in these services, with different parts of the county doing things in different ways.

“I think it would be fair to say it’s a service that’s been quite under-invested in, which affects what can be delivered.

“That’s why we want people to know that this is not a one-off decision to close a service. It’s not a negative decision but part of a wider solution. It’s important to recognise that, for the people who have used Portland Square, it’s been a very valuable service.

“We don’t want to lose that so we are looking at how we can keep the bits that were good about it, but develop it so that the service is more proactive and modern.”

Mrs Fenton believes the service can be vastly improved by pooling resources – with Children’s Services and the LEA, for example – to ensure there is no duplication and resources are used effectively.

A key focus of the new approach will be early intervention, working closely with teachers, educational psychologists and other experts to identify issues that if not addressed can lead to more severe mental health problems, such as depression.

She said schools in Cumbria are already doing a lot of good work around mental health. This includes talking openly about the importance of emotional wellbeing with children from an early age.

The trust has now applied for Government funding to launch a series of pilot projects alongside school clusters in Carlisle, Workington and the south Lakes area.