The CAMHS Referrals and Outcomes for Adolescents and Children with Social Workers (COACHES) study is a four-year collaboration between the University of Cambridge, Kingston University, King’s College London, NCB, the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) and the Care Leavers Association examining data from over 100,000 young people across two NHS trusts.
At the heart of the project are qualitative contributions by young people and parents with direct experience of mental health and wellbeing interventions within the social care system, facilitated by the Care Leavers Association.
The project partners hope that the research findings could have a significant impact on how social care and mental health services are shaped and delivered to children and young people over the next two decades. It follows the acknowledgement from the Independent Children’s Social Care Review that mental health is a key issue facing young people who are in or leaving care.
Specifically, the project aims to provide answers to the following questions:
- What factors influenced whether a young person’s referral to CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) is accepted or rejected?
- What CAMHS treatments prove helpful for young people?
- What is the cost effectiveness of these treatments?
- How are young people with social care involvement depicted within CAMHS case notes?
- What are the experiences of young people with social care involvement of their treatment by CAMHS?
The study looks at examples of children and young people with social work involvement in different areas of the UK.
As part of our role to connect and engage with policymakers and parliamentarians, NCB has been doing sustained engagement of the research project with Department for Education, Department for Health and Social Care and NHS England, sharing the objectives and findings of the research and providing crucial evidence on what works and what is less effective when it comes to CAMHS interventions with children and young people with social work involvement.
Read a briefing on the summary of evidence created to date
COACHES is funded by Foundations (formerly What Works for Children’s Social Care) and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).
NIHR recently changed its name from the National Institute of Health Research to emphasise its responsibility for supporting the development of social care research.
The NIHR Research for Social Care scheme will now run twice yearly, thanks to a £5m a year investment, and will be open to children’s social care. The NIHR Academy is also offering funding for Masters and PhD study for people whose research would contribute to the mission of local authorities.
One of the ambitions of the project team working on COACHES is to contribute to the wider environment supporting children’s social care research, and they will be supporting practitioners to get involved with the study, in conjunction with the British Association of Social Workers.
The COACHES project uses the Clinical Record Interactive Search (CRIS) to support its analysis and findings. NCB, Cambridge University and King’s College London collaborate on multiple projects using CRIS, which was commissioned by NIHR. It enables researchers to undertake studies using information from the anonymised clinical records of the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.