Emotional wellbeing is one of the key areas of Medway Children’s Trust and is overseen by the Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health partnership. This group consists of all the major organisations in Medway including children’s services, health services, voluntary organisations and the police that are working to highlight the importance of emotional health and where necessary provide advice, support and treatment to improve the mental health and emotional wellbeing of children and young people in Medway.

All children and young people have their ups and downs as they are growing up but with support from family and friends and others around them most cope well enough. Sometimes however things can get on top of young people and they can become depressed, withdrawn, isolated, find it difficult to concentrate at school, eating and sleeping may become affected and they may misuse drugs and alcohol.

These problems if they mount up can get in the way of young people’s mentally healthy lives and can affect their confidence and happiness. It is important therefore that there are services in place to support young people if they are concerned about their mental health.

Young people may want to get some advice about a problem or talk to somebody like a counsellor. This may be in school or at a youth centre or somewhere the young person feels comfortable. Sometimes if problems are more serious they may need to see a doctor or another specialist in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) or substance misuse services and occasionally they may need to spend some time in hospital for treatment.

The Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health partnership wants to make sure these services are available, that they are the right services in the right place and that young people feel comfortable using them. Most importantly, the partnership wants to make sure they are working well and that young people, their families, schools and GP’s are confident they will offer the help and support they need.

The priorities for this group are

1. An improvement in the emotional wellbeing and mental health of all children and young people in Medway.

The group will do this by,

Implementing the recommendations of the Medway fundamental review of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and the national CAMHS review.

Developing an integrated service to promote and respond to the emotional wellbeing of children and young people.

2. Reduce the incidence of alcohol and drug misuse among young people in Medway.

The group will do this by improving personal, social and health education (PSHE) regarding drugs and alcohol.

Outcomes:

• A comprehensive CAMH service with explicit referral criteria for universal, targeted and specialist services to include emergancy access 24/7 to specialist services. 
• Children, young people and their families have early and timely access to information and support regarding their emotional wellbeing and mental health in universal, targeted and specialist settings.  
• All staff working directly with children and young people have sufficient knowledge, training and support to promote the emotional wellbeing and mental health of children, young people and their families and identify early indicators of difficulty, including substance misuse.
• Children and young poeple with both a learning disability and a mental health disorder have access to appropriate child and adolescent emotional wellbeing and mental health services.
• Comprehensive CAMHS care pathways for emotional wellbeing and mental health support for a range of vulnerable groups notably ASD, ADHD, Self Harm, LAC and children who misuse drugs/alcohol.
• A reduction in under age drinking.
• Increase the number of drug users in effective treatment.

Chair: Sally Morris, Assisstant Director Commissioning and Strategy, Medway Council

For further information contact Gurmit Sandhu Commissioning Manager for Emotional Wellbeing on 01634 334404.