Well, I finally met the new head of CAMHS and I like him. He seems to mix honesty and pragmatism with empathy. He also has enough common sense to know that his first task is to contain the anxiety and uncertainty that has built up in the service over the last few months. He has worked previously in social services and CAMHS, so he seems genuinely grounded in providing good quality services and I am reassured that he values LAC services.

Last week we had a ‘service development day’ in a local golf club, combined with a xmas lunch, which was finally what should have happened on 8th August (or That Friday, as it is now known). We have been assured that our voices will be heard, and there will be proper consultation about how the service evolves, with any changes being negotiated. If any changes have to be imposed on us, eg change of role or band, this will be after informal and formal consultation, and our pay will be protected for 3 years and that clock will not start ticking any earlier than June 2009. We started talking about how we develop a unified service and get the best from both models. Within the group I was in there was actually fairly good levels of consensus about prefered models of service delivery, and where we wanted to expand good services from each half of the county. This is being fed into a working group (with CP representation within it) to explore how to take things forward.

I’ve been asked to explore where there is scope for CAMHS to tender for other service areas that would benefit from CP input (for example, training staff in private organisations, or doing court work). I think there is a sense that CP needs to justify its high price tag by being able to income generate. At one level that is ridiculous, as no-one makes such requirements of the medics, despite their even higher price-tags, but at another level I think that it is a challenge that we can rise to, and doing this kind of work would be worth it if it creates additional CP posts rather than allowing posts to be put at risk.

The proposed service structure has been changed again, and has two Tier 3 CAMHS teams for each half of the county, a PMHW service split over the county, an intensive support/home treatment service (with a Tier 4 inpatient CAMHS unit being built in the near future). The current plan is for the LAC team to be a targetted specialist service, but managed within Tier 3 CAMHS. And reassuringly the professionals I most respect are being given greater influence in the process, and some of those I was concerned about have already moved on.

So, I think all told I am feeling a litte bit more positive.

But the secret boosting my mood was that, given the unwelcome welcome to the new service structure I had decided that I’d never be less loyal to the NHS, and that it was time to come off contraception, and I had found out I was pregnant before this meeting, although I didn’t say so at the time!