Demand across CAMHS services continues to rise, with many teams under pressure to reduce waiting times while managing increasing complexity across services. Recent data showed over 385,000 children and young people were still waiting for a first contact with mental health services in 2025.
Increasing capacity is part of the solution, but additional support also needs to work in practice for NHS teams. If services are difficult to access, poorly integrated or create additional coordination, they can add pressure rather than reduce it.
Alongside improving access, services also need to maintain clinical quality, safeguarding oversight and continuity of care. This means thinking not only about how quickly support can be delivered, but how it is delivered within existing CAMHS pathways.
In this blog, we explore what safe, integrated CAMHS delivery actually looks like in practice, including a case study following one young person’s journey through accessible CBT support. Download the case study below.
Download our case study
A 16 year old referred to CAMHS with severe anxiety. Ten CBT sessions later, her outcome scores had shifted from severe to healthy range. Download the case study to see how accessible, remote delivery made that possible.
Why increasing capacity alone isn’t enough in CAMHS
For many CAMHS teams, the challenge is not only reducing waiting times, but doing so while maintaining clinical quality, safeguarding oversight and continuity of care.
Additional support can help relieve pressure, but only where it integrates effectively with existing services and does not create additional operational burden for NHS teams.
Why delivery models matter in CAMHS support
Increasing capacity alone does not always reduce pressure for CAMHS teams. How support is delivered also has a significant impact on accessibility, engagement and operational sustainability.
Delivery models matter because they can influence:
- How easily children and young people are able to engage with support
- Whether services reduce or add operational pressure for NHS teams
- Continuity of care and integration within existing pathways
- Consistency in clinical quality, safeguarding and oversight
- Flexibility in responding to differing levels of complexity and need
Children and young people engage with support in different ways, and inaccessible or fragmented pathways can lead to missed appointments, disengagement and delays in care.
Additional support therefore needs to work within existing CAMHS services, while remaining accessible, clinically robust and operationally sustainable in practice.
In this short video, Matt Daniel explains Healios’ approach to managing demand safely in practice.
So what does safe capacity look like in practice?
Clinician-led, consistent delivery
Additional support should be delivered by experienced multidisciplinary teams, supported by strong governance structures and aligned to National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance.
This includes the ability to work across a wide range of presentations and levels of complexity, rather than focusing only on straightforward cases or returning more complex referrals back into NHS services.
Clear safeguarding processes, clinical accountability and structured pathways help maintain consistency and quality as demand increases.
Accessible and flexible pathways
Children and young people engage in care in different ways, and accessibility matters.
Providing a range of options, including digitally delivered CAMHS support accessed from home or another safe environment, can help reduce barriers to support and improve engagement.
When used appropriately, digital pathways can also reduce pressure on face-to-face services, allowing in-person support to be focused where it’s most needed.
In practice
For example, one young person referred to Healios was experiencing anxiety that had begun to impact school attendance and day-to-day functioning. At the time of referral, they were attending online lessons due to difficulties accessing school in person.
Accessing support remotely helped reduce barriers to engagement and enabled the young person to begin CBT intervention through Healios in a way that felt manageable and accessible for them.
Following intervention, outcome measures reduced from severe to healthy range, alongside significant improvements in confidence and daily functioning.
This highlights the importance of accessible, clinician-led pathways that can support engagement and earlier intervention for children and young people with differing needs and presentations.
Download the full case study below to explore the intervention, outcomes and approach in more detail.
Integrated delivery within existing CAMHS services
When services operate separately, it can create duplication and add further pressure for NHS teams. Additional support should therefore work within existing pathways.
Integrated delivery should support continuity of care, reduce administrative burden and align with how services already operate.
This is what makes additional support sustainable, rather than a short-term intervention.
Operational support and visibility
Alongside clinical delivery, operational support plays a significant role in managing demand safely.
This can include:
- Referral management and coordination
- Initial contact and triage
- Consistent communication and reporting
- Transparent outcomes tracking
Services also often need support at short notice.
Safe capacity combines responsiveness with the structures needed to maintain governance, visibility and quality from the outset.
Managing demand safely requires more than additional appointments
Reducing CAMHS waiting lists remains a priority across NHS services.
But increasing appointment numbers alone is not enough.
Long-term impact depends on delivering support that is clinically robust, accessible and integrated within existing pathways – helping services respond to rising demand without creating additional pressure elsewhere in the system.
Download our case study
A 16 year old referred to CAMHS with severe anxiety. Ten CBT sessions later, her outcome scores had shifted from severe to healthy range. Download the case study below to see how accessible, remote delivery made that possible.