Social Workers in CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services)

Chairperson: Sinead Freeley,

Secretary: Mary Mc Namara,

Committee: Sheila Mc Kenna, David Hugues, Sarah Houston, Eleanor Kelly, Paul Longmore

President elect: Sheila Mc Kenna

Meetings:

Since the last AGM of the IASW, our special interest group in CAMHS has had three regular meetings of the national group, 11^th May ’09 in Galway, 9^th Nov’09 in Mater CAMHS James Joyce Street & 8^th Feb ’10 in Mater CAMHS James Joyce St. We would like to thank Eleanor Kelly, John Sharry and Sarah Houston for facilitating the clinical practice workshops in May’09, Nov’09 & Feb 2010. 

• In October 2009, Sarah Houston became the new representative for the IASW.
• April 2009, IASW AGM & Conference.
• Motions were proposed by SW’s in CAMHS. See IASW Annual Report 2008/2009. 2010 motions to be proposed at the IASW AGM on Fri 23/04/09. 
• In May Galway CAMHS facilitated the presentation by John Fitzmaurice who informed us about Jigsaw a pilot service developed by Headstrong in consultation with the HSE and Mental Health Ireland. It is community bases system of care that supports young people aged 15-26 to achieve better mental health and well being.
• At the November national meeting John Sharry Principal Social Worker in Mater CAMHS presented on the subject of integrating research into practice using the Parents Plus Program. He described the use of control studies as well as ongoing feedback from clients which can be used to adapt practice to improve outcomes.
• At the recent February national meeting, Sarah Houston (SW in Lucena CAMHS) & Lisa Scott (OT Lucena CAMHS) gave a very innovative presentation on therapeutic group work called ‘Child Out’ – A Collaborative Approach to Managing Difficult Emotions.
• The final draft of Section 25 Mental Health Act – Guidelines for the admission of a child was discussed at the Nov’09 national meeting. This document is available from Sinead Freeley: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Meetings with IMPACT

Sheila has committed a lot of time attending meetings with Impact and feeding back the content of these meetings to the national group meetings. 

CAMHS Advisory Group

Sarah Houston has been representing the interests of the SIG on a multidisciplinary group chaired by Brendan Doody. The group has been meeting monthly since July 2009 to discuss and inform HSE practices regarding audit, activity and outcome measures, key performance indicators and best practice guidelines in CAMHS in Ireland.  

HSE National Audit

In November 2009 the CAMHS services within the HSE carried out a national audit.