Mental health spending for children drops

Three NHS boards in Scotland are spending less on child mental health services than last year despite failing to meet waiting times, the BBC has found.

14 Scottish NHS boards in the last quarter met the 18-week waiting time standard.

One of the health boards that cut funding - Grampian - met the target in just a third of cases and had an average wait of 21 weeks.

Tayside and Lothian also reduced the amount spent on child mental health.

NHS Lothian, which cut funding by £390,000 saw just 57 per cent of child referrals within the 18-week target during the last quarter.

NHS Grampian and NHS Tayside both cut spending by £80,000.

The spending figures come from freedom of information requests made by Richard Simpson, the former MSP and Labour public health spokesman, who is honorary professor at health sciences at the University of Stirling.

He received responses from Scotland’s 11 mainland health boards - three cut spending, one reported no change, another three increased spending by less than inflation and four put up funding by substantially more than last year.

Despite large percentage rises in spending on CAMHS (child and adolescent mental health services) in Ayrshire and Arran (10.57 per cent), Lanarkshire (9.76 per cent), Highland (8.96 per cent) and Forth Valley (7.42 per cent), the overall spending for the 11 mainland NHS boards rose by less than inflation.

The Scottish government has set a standard to deliver a maximum wait of 18 weeks from referral to treatment. It wants to deliver this in at least 90 per cent of cases.

The average waits have been rising during 2017 and the percentage seen within the 18-week target has dropped from 82.5 per cent at the end of last year to 73.3 per cent in the three months to September.

An NHS Grampian spokeswoman said they were currently recruiting for additional clinical staff.

In the meantime, she said NHS Grampian was focused on seeing the children ‘requiring urgent and emergency appointments’.

She said the service ‘regrets that our waiting time continues to fall short’ and they are reviewing all options to improve matters.