Primary Mental Health Workers within Youth Offending Teams: a new service model

Abstract

Primary Mental Health Workers (PMHWs) have been deployed to address the mental health needs of young offenders referred to Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) in two UK areas. The mental health characteristics of 60 young people consecutively referred to these PMHWs, the assessment outcome and interventions offered, are described. In addition to the anticipated concerns about oppositional/aggressive behaviour, young people were referred for a range of mental health problems. There were high levels of emotional problems, self‐harm, peer and family relationships difficulties, and school non‐attendance. PMHWs offered a range of direct interventions, as well as consultation to YOT staff. The service findings indicate the usefulness of such an inter‐agency model in strengthening the links between specialist CAMHS and YOTs, and providing an accessible, responsive and effective service to a needy group of young people.

Evaluation of a New Mental Health Service for Looked after Children

“…The primary mental health workers apply the same principles of generic CAMHS (Gale & Vostanis, 2003), but adapted for tier 1/2 staff such as residential social workers, foster carers and link workers (Figure 1). Services to young offenders and homeless children have been evaluated through a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods (Callaghan et al, 2003;Tischler, Vostanis, Bellerby, & Cumella, 2002). This article described the evaluation of the first phase of the mental health service for looked after children, and provides data on the short-term outcome of children and young people who received assessment and intervention, albeit not on cases managed through consultation to referrers.…”

‘In two minds’ – socially motivated self-harm is perceived as less serious than internally motivated: A qualitative study of youth justice staff

“…Detection of mental health problems, and particularly internalising disorders, in community youth justice is known to be suboptimal (Callaghan et al, 2003). Self-harm is one of the most serious issues for which false negatives would be unacceptable (Bailey and Tarbuck, 2006).…”

The Substantial Service Demands of Offenders and Frequent Offenders

“…Among the earliest inter-professional developments in the UK were Youth Offending Teams (YOTs). Callaghan et al (2003) reported high levels of mental health and emotional problems, self-harm, peer and family relationship difficulties, and school non-attendance among the teams' clients, and stressed the usefulness of such an inter-agency model to tackle their problems. Multi-agency and inter-professional health care services are developing in some areas -for example, drug misuse -where services are working more closely with the criminal justice system (Rumgay 2003).…”