Children and Young People’s Mental Health Newsletter May 2025

The latest Children and Young People’s Mental Health Newsletter is now available to view or download. Some articles are freely accessible, others require an Open Athens account. Please get in touch for support with this: academic.library@lscft.nhs.uk.

Always Events Toolkit

Always Events are aspects of the patient experience that are so important to patients, their care partners, and service users that health care providers must aim to perform them consistently for every individual, every time. The toolkit supports providers in partnering with patients and family members to co-design, reliably implement, and sustain and spread Always Events to dramatically improve the care experience.

https://www.ihi.org/resources/tools/always-events-toolkit

World Breastfeeding Awareness Week

Every year, we celebrate Breastfeeding Awareness Week to highlight the critical importance of breastfeeding for both mothers and their babies. This week is a time to spread awareness about the numerous benefits breastfeeding provides, from essential nutrients and antibodies for infants to reduced health risks for mothers.

Our library is dedicated to supporting breastfeeding mothers and their families. We offer a wealth of resources on breastfeeding.

During this week, let’s come together to support and encourage breastfeeding mothers. Whether through providing accurate information, or simply offering a listening ear, each of us can make a difference.

Public Health

Current Awareness

Source: KnowledgeShare

Bowel Cancer Screening: Annual Report 2021 to 2022.
Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID); 2024.

(Data report for the Bowel Screening Programme (BCSP) screening which focuses on programme performance in England during the screening year 2021 to 2022 (1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022) compared to the national bowel cancer screening programme standards. It also includes trend data from previous years where this is available.)

Supporting Families – a foundation for family help: Annual report of the Supporting Families programme 2023-2024.
Department for Education, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities; 2024.

(This eighth annual report of the Supporting Families programme provides an update on progress made during 2023 to 2024. Since the publication of our last Annual Report, 77,203 families have been supported to achieve a successful family outcome.)
Freely available online

Autism Statistics, January to December 2023.
NHS Digital; 2024.

(These statistics present a group of measures on waiting times for autism spectrum disorder diagnostic pathways, based on the time between a referral for suspected autism and the first care contact associated with that referral.)
Freely available online

Drug and alcohol treatment for victims and suspects of homicide.
Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID); 2024.

(A Better Outcomes through Linked Data (BOLD) report looking at the use of substance misuse treatment services by victims and suspects of homicide in England. The report includes information and findings on treatment characteristics of victims and suspects, such as their sociodemographic, accommodation and employment status; and characteristics of the homicide and the relationships between victims and suspects and whether the homicide was drug-related.)

To get personalised research straight to your inbox signup to KnowledgeShare. Simply download the form and send it back to academic.library@lscft.nhs.uk

Toolkit

Talking with families about parental relationships: Practical tips and guiding questions

Source: Early Intervention Foundation (EIF); 2022.
This short guide provides practitioners and leads in local areas with practical tips on how to talk to families about parental conflict, and how to alleviate negative feelings about relationship support.

Public Health

Current Awareness

Sexual assault has lasting effects on teenagers’ mental health and education.
NIHR Evidence; 2022.
(The mental and physical health symptoms reported in this study were higher than in the general population. Young people who had been involved with social services, or who had mental health problems before the assault had worse mental health problems and worse school attendance afterwards. Sexual assault can therefore increase health inequalities in this already vulnerable group.)

Autistic people’s healthcare information strategy for England.
NHS England; 2022.
(This document sets out an initial strategy for the development of information about the health of, and health care received by people with autism in England, from sources already collected or being established. It proposes the development of three dashboards, setting out statistics for: autism diagnosis services and transition from child to adult services; long-term health conditions, healthcare use and mortality for autistic people; more intensive inputs from mental health services.)

Suicide prevention – priorities in the next decade.
(Consultant psychiatrist JS Bamrah speaks to Professor Louis Appleby, who leads the National Suicide Prevention Strategy for England and directs the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness. The webinar will cover current suicide prevention priorities, tying in with the recently announced suicide prevention strategy from the UK Government, before answering questions from the chair and audience. The event is open to BMA members and non-members.)

Food poverty: households, food banks and free school meals
House of Commons Library; 2022.
(There is no widely accepted definition of ‘food poverty’. However, a household can broadly be defined as experiencing food poverty or ‘household food insecurity’ if they cannot (or are uncertain about whether they can) acquire “an adequate quality or sufficient quantity of food in socially acceptable ways”. The increase in the cost of living has increased household food insecurity.)

Public Health

Current awareness updates

Family hubs and start for life programme: local authority guide.
Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC); 2022.

(Guidance and sign up form for local authorities pre-selected to take part in the family hubs and start for life programme.)

Commissioning quality standard: alcohol and drug services.
Office for Health Improvement & Disparities (OHID); 2022.
(Guidance for local authorities to support them in commissioning effective alcohol and drug treatment and recovery services in their areas.)

Direct and indirect health impacts of Covid-19 in England: emerging Omicron impacts

Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC); 2022 This paper (produced together with the Office for National Statistics) gives an overview of the direct health impacts of Covid-19 in terms of morbidity and mortality and the indirect impacts arising through behavioural changes and health system pressures.

Public Health Outcomes Framework: August 2022 data update

Office for Health Improvement & Disparities (OHID); 2022.

The Public Health Outcomes Framework (PHOF) examines indicators that help health and care professionals and the public to understand trends in public health. The data is presented in an interactive tool that allows users to view it in a user-friendly format. The data tool also provides links to further supporting information, to aid understanding of public health in a local population.

Library Bulletins

Family Therapy, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and EMDR

The current bulletins for Family TherapyCognitive Behaviour Therapy and EMDR, produced by Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust, are now available to view and download.

For support accessing any of the articles within the bulletins please contact: academic.library@lscft.nhs.uk

Covid 19

Current awareness updates

Impact of Covid-19 on new parents: one year on: Government Response to the Committee’s First Report.
Petitions Committee; 2022.
[The government’s response points to the £500 million investment announced in the 2021 Autumn Spending Review for family and early years services. This report concludes that this goes some way to addressing the ‘baby blind spot’ in Covid-19 recovery spending identified in the Committee’s report but the response contains no new commitments in response to the concerns raised and recommendations made in the report.]

Volunteering and helping out in the COVID-19 outbreak.
Centre for Ageing Better; 2022.
[This report, based on research conducted by NatCen Social Research, aims to understand the patterns of formal volunteering and informal support that emerged in, and between, July 2020 and November 2020.]

Community connectedness in the COVID-19 outbreak.
Centre for Ageing Better; 2022.
[This report investigates how people across England related to their neighbourhoods as the COVID-19 pandemic challenged individuals and communities while reducing their access to traditional mechanisms of support.]

Adfam Research

Overlooked: why we should be doing more to support families and friends affected by someone else’s drinking, drug use or gambling

This report examines Adfam’s latest research with YouGov on the prevalence of people currently negatively affected by the drinking, drug use or gambling of a family member or friend in 2021, and the different challenges and impacts these families currently face. The report’s findings highlight the need for more recognition of the impacts on families and friends and it includes recommendations on how to better support this overlooked group.