Commissioning Child & Adolescent Psychotherapy

All child and adolescent mental health services need to ensure that psychoanalytic psychotherapy is available to children and young people; and that psychotherapeutic support is available to staff working with children with emotional and behavioural problems in the community, schools, residential and foster care.

The gaps in specialist services have been highlighted as an issue for the current national CAMHS Review:

“Some specialist services are not meeting the needs of our most vulnerable children with complex and challenging needs.”

The recently published Report on the Implementation of Standard 9 of the National Service Framework for Children, Young People and Maternity Services highlights short and medium priorities including the elimination of unacceptable variations in service provision between different geographical areas. 

A large proportion of districts within the north of England are not providing child and adolescent psychotherapy, or have limited provision, and significant numbers of children and young people do not have access to this service .

It is hoped that the information available on this website will assist in the commissioning of child and adolescent psychotherapy as a core component of comprehensive child and adolescent mental health services.

Document 1: The leaflet below includes a map of the three Strategic Health Authority areas in the north of England and highlights the PCT districts that do not currently commission child and adolescent psychotherapy services. The leaflet also identifies the functions that may be missing locally if child and adolescent psychotherapy is not commissioned and the impact of these gaps on service delivery and patient outcomes.

Where to look next

The links down the left hand side of the page will take you to further materials to assist with the commissioning of child and adolescent psychotherapy services. Each page includes documents providing more detailed information and these documents are gathered together for ease of reference on the Information for Commissioners page.

Want more information?

If you would like to obtain further information or to arrange a consultation from NSCAP to support the development of local service and workforce strategies please contact Nick Waggett , Executive Manager NSCAP on 0113 343 4868 or email