Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many referrals have been accepted by Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services in Gateshead in each of the last five years.

The following table shows the number of referrals for those children aged between 0 and 17 years old at the time of referral to mental health services in Gateshead local authority between 2019/20 and 2023/24:

Source: Mental Health Dataset, NHS England

Notes:

1. The definition of by Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in the dataset is not clear cut and also the methodology for deriving CAMHS changes over time. As such, the use of age at referral is the most reliable way of defining those referred to CAMHS.
2. The number provided includes all new referrals in each year where the person was a resident of the local authority of Gateshead. In addition, the number of referrals which have had a contact is included to provide context around the numbers of referrals which have been received and subsequently had a care contact.
3. For some referrals it may not be expected that a contact would be recorded. For example, in some circumstances, referrals are received by triage teams. These referrals are subsequently closed without a contact with a new referral opened once triaged.
4. In some scenarios, referral IDs are being re-used. For the purposes of this analysis, the care contact must take place within the same referral for the same person, as such a small number of contacts may not be included within a specific referral but this is a data quality issue.