Improving child and adolescent mental health services: Evaluating the impact of the iTHRIVE

Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) face significant challenges, with up to 70% of children not being seen within a year despite 20% experiencing mental health issues.

 

The THRIVE Framework, introduced in 2015, offers an approach to improve mental health services for children and young people that is integrated, person-centred and needs-led. The National i-THRIVE Programme aims to improve outcomes for children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing by implementing the THRIVE framework into services.

 

This project sought to evaluate the implementation and impact of the i-THRIVE programme on CAMHS services. We used interviews and surveys collected from programme leads and CAMHS staff, collected site-level information to understand similarities and differences between sites, and used site assessments to see whether sites were adopting THRIVE principles.

Today, over 60% of children in England live in areas where THRIVE is applied, and 70% of specialist child mental health services use the framework.  

The comprehensive evaluation of the THRIVE Framework demonstrates its potential to enhance service access, efficiency, and quality, showcasing a scalable model for future mental health service improvements. In particular, participating sites saw:  

Sites also improved efficiency, reducing patient episode duration by 4% and increasing patient contacts by 30%. Face-to-face interactions increased by 37%, while engagement levels remained stable compared to control sites. 

In the analysis of implementation, we found that sites needed to have strong/effective working relationships within their local systems in order for implementation to work well.