Jeremy Hunt MP visited the child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) for his South West Surrey constituency – based at Farnham Road Hospital in Guildford.
Jeremy has recently highlighted the need for the NHS to intervene early to enable young people to recovery from childhood mental ill-health.
During his visit, on Friday 21st October, he learnt about the new Mindsight Surrey CAMHS service, which launched in April, and is run by Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and a number of public, private and voluntary sector partners.
Jeremy met with senior staff from the Trust, including; Director of Children and Young People’s Services, Linda McQuaid; Medical Director, Dr Justin Wilson and Clinical Director and Consultant Child Psychiatrist, Dr Phil Ferreira-Lay.
Jeremy Hunt said: “I was very impressed with the Mindsight project that Linda and her team explained to me. It will transform CAMHS services in Surrey, creating a much-needed single point of contact to help people get quick and appropriate care.
This is the kind of transformation I want to see everywhere – congratulations to all working on the project for such dedication and passion to make a difference”.
Linda McQuaid, said: “It was a pleasure to meet Mr Hunt today and to discuss the new child and adolescent mental health services with him. His clear commitment to these services to ensure that there is an improved focus on early- intervention and prevention fits exactly with the Mindsight Surrey CAMHS vision and we gave him some examples of how we are already making substantial improvements to the service.
“Mr Hunt was especially interested in our partnership approach and how we are using new technologies to provide an alternative way of accessing help. For example, already this year more than 400 young people have registered onto our anonymous online counselling service. We also described our Single Point of Access through CAMHS One Stop and how this has ensured that any young person needing our services is navigated directly to the right place without delay.”