COV - Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health Service - AWARD

The aim of the service is to provide an early intervention emotional wellbeing support offer that is embedded within the local community, creating a closer integration with Early Help at the earliest opportunity, to help prevent escalation. This will include providing support to families to support their children and young people.

The focus of the new model is to develop a flexible support offer providing accessible and timely response to the emotional well-being needs of children and young people, embedding the offer within the heart of Coventry's communities, supporting those harder to reach groups, particularly those who find the more clinical setting overwhelming and off-putting.

The model has been shaped and developed, following the completion of an in-depth needs analysis, including stakeholder engagement and up-to-date policy review. In addition, the impact of covid on the mental health of children and young people, as well as the overall CAMHS system has informed the design of the service model.

Engagement and policy review outlined that children and young people, and their carers feel most unsafe and unsupported when sitting on long waiting lists, with no contact or information in the interim. The new service aims to bridge that gap. Providing early intervention, effective signposting, referral, and where possible social prescribing, this is a new service that will hold children and their families safely whilst they wait for further intervention and support. A service that aims to prevent escalation of need by intervening early, providing low-level support and therapeutic intervention which can be accessed not only by the child but by the family as a whole. Empowering parents and carers are a key part of this service model, as is informing, supporting, and training schools and GPs to improve social awareness of mental health and reduce its stigma.