Government Announces €10 Million in Funding for Mental Health Services

Minister for Mental Health and Older People Mary Butler TD this week announced the allocation of an additional €10 million in funding for mental health services secured through the Revised Estimates process.

The focus of this new 2024 investment funding is in child and youth mental health including Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and online safety for children.

It will specifically support new recruitment into CAMHS services and provide funding for other services for children and young people, with a focus on prevention and early intervention mental health supports. This includes additional posts to expand CAMHS Hubs to provide enhanced intensive brief mental health interventions to young people in times of acute crisis, and extra CAMHS staff at Emergency Departments to assist young people who have presented there to access services. There will also be additional recruitment of staff to further expand specialist mental health services for young people in areas such as ADHD, eating disorders and early intervention in psychosis.

The additional €10 million allocation announced by Minister Butler today will see the recruitment of further posts across mental health services and comes in addition to Budget 2024 funding for 68 posts for CAMHS and child and youth mental health. Taken together, these 130 new posts for 2024 will strengthen CAMHS teams nationwide, enhance CAMHS Hub teams and develop key clinical care programmes such as early intervention in psychosis, eating disorders, ADHD, and dual diagnosis.

Some key measures that will be advanced through the funding include:

• A new eating disorder team for CHO7 (covering Kildare/West Wicklow, Dublin West, Dublin South City, Dublin South West)
• New annual funding for the Seeking Safety Ireland Programme, which supports women experiencing the dual diagnosis of mental health difficulties and addiction, in addition to domestic and sexual gender-based violence and associated issues. This Programme is receiving recurring funding for the first time, following a successful pilot project
• Additional supports for Traveller mental health – particularly for young Travellers – to access counselling, psychotherapy, and related youth work supports
• Additional Suicide Crisis Assessment Nurses (SCAN) for CAMHS. SCAN Nurses work with GPs to urgently assess people experiencing a suicidal crisis and identify the key supports they need, working with the person and their family
• Additional funding to Jigsaw for early intervention youth mental health services for 12 to 25-year-olds
• Posts to reduce the number waiting for over 12 months for CAMHS services, through the provision of additional ADHD support. Many young people on CAMHS wait lists are awaiting an assessment for suspected ADHD, and this resource will expedite assessments and access to appropriate interventions
• Two pilot sites (CHO2 and CHO9) to trial a new approach to referrals into children’s services including mental health services, primary care and disability services, where referrals will be processed by a single office covering all services, rather than individual referrals being made to each service. Known as the ‘No Wrong Door’ approach, it will help avoid children having multiple referrals and better guide parents to the most appropriate service for their child

Minister Butler said, “My key aim in allocating this new funding is to continue to improve access to child and youth mental health services, including addressing CAMHS waiting lists and enhancing specialist mental health services such as eating disorders and ADHD. The additional €10 million in funding that I have secured for mental health will be focused on improving access to services, better integration between services, and embedding innovative service models. Last year, we saw more children and young people seen by CAMHS teams, and my focus is on making sure this continues with more children being seen more quickly by the most appropriate service to their needs.

“Increased investment is having a real impact. There were 12% more CAMHS appointments offered to children and young people last year. Our waiting list for CAMHS services continues to fall, with nearly 500 fewer children waiting by the end of last year. Additional funding this year will see more people working across CAMHS, with young people being seen more quickly.”

Minister Butler continued, “My focus now is to expand CAMHS service delivery, as well as wider services for young people, and to expand the roll-out of our National Clinical Programmes such as ADHD in Adults, Early Intervention in Psychosis and Eating Disorders to more areas of the country.

“I will be ensuring that funding allocations are geographically spread to areas of the country which have higher levels of need and where teams under our National Clinical Programmes have yet to be established.”

(Source: Department of Health)