What is the project?

Using the CAMHS Clinical Pathway, the project will be mapping the skills and competencies needed by clinicians along the stages. In conjunction with this we will be collating information from local CAMHS workforce plans to provide a gaps-analysis for training and skills across the region.

Key outcomes

• Support for areas completing their workforce plans and for service improvements.

• Collate the regions workforce plans, produce a gap-analysis (skills, training, competencies) identifying opportunities for development and recommendations to address needs.

• Develop a portfolio of job descriptions and competences.

• Scope the provision of relevant training available across the region.

• Information and resources to be regularly placed on WMRDC website for a range of roles in CAMHS.

Have you completed your CAMHS workforce plan yet?
When it is finished, please email it to Helen Hipkiss and Carolyn Gavin.
If you need support completing your workforce plan, please contact Carolyn Gavin.

Why complete a workforce plan?

You may be wondering what is the benefit of completing a workforce plan for your CAMHS partnership.

In order to achieve the recommendations and targets set in Every Child Matters, The NSF Standard 9, National CAMHS Review, and the 2020 Children and Young People`s Workforce Strategy, all CAMHS partnership groups need to ensure that their workforce is sufficient, appropriately skilled and well led. To do this, you need to understand your current workforce, the needs of your local population and the demands that theirs needs may create for your services.

Annually the Strategic Health Authority requests information about your overall workforce and the projected demand in future years. CAMHS services are a small part of these overall figures and it is hard to pull out specific and detailed CAMHS workforce needs from these generalised plans.

In order to support the delivery of local CAMHS strategies, it was requested that CAMHS Partnership groups complete a detailed Workforce Plan. This plan needs to address the key themes;

• that it works towards improving workforce design and planning

• it identifies and uses creative means to recruit and retain staff

• it facilitates New Ways of Working across professional boundaries

• it considers the creation of new roles

• it seeks to develop the workforce through education and training

• develops leadership and change management skills

Ultimately, this needs to be an ongoing process whereby commissioners and providers review their ongoing needs to their local population and ensure that their services continue to develop using the most appropriately skilled staff, in order to deliver high quality care for children, young people and their carers.

For further detailed information about CAMHS and Workforce Planning can be found at Delivering workforce capacity, capability and sustainability in CAMHS - Barry Nixon and at CSIP Workforce.

Workforce Planning Tool

The template can be found at the original workforce planning tool that was supported by WMCSIP Action Learning sets in 2007.

Completed examples can also be found on the HASCAS website, and NWW.