Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services Evidence-Based Practice Unit (CAMHS EBPU)
The CAMHS EBPU is an academic unit that is part of University College London (UCL) and the Anna Freud Centre.
Established in January 2006, the unit aims to develop and disseminate information about the latest research relating to helping children and young people with emotional and behavioural difficulties, and their families.
The unit actively seeks to promote outcomes-based and evidence-informed practice. This involves advising child mental health professionals about the strengths and the limitations of the evidence base, and about how to use routine outcome evaluation to reflect on and improve practice.
As such, the unit aims to help professionals in developing the best practice methods possible. The unit is also committed to helping children, young people and their families in choosing the help that is right for them.
- Research
- Me and My School evaluation project
- Publications
- Training Courses and Conferences
- National Conference, Leicester, July 10th 2008 Evidence Based Practice & Practice Based Evidence - how can they be usefully combined?
- UCL short course Outcomes-Based Leadership in CAMHS course
- New UCL Postgraduate Certificate/Diploma/MSc in CBT and other Outcomes-Based Interventions - click here for details
- Informing service development
- About the CAMHS EBPU
- Contact
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National Conference - Evidence Based Practice & Practice Based Evidence
Evidence Based Practice & Practice Based Evidence - how can they be usefully combined?
The Walkers Stadium, Leicester, Thursday 10th July 2008
A conference jointly organised by the CAMHS EBPU, the Department of Health and Care Services Improvement Partnership - Children, Young People and Families Programme
Conference aims
- To share different views of the appropriate balance between research evidence and practice evidence from international experts from the USA and UK.
- To explore participants' experience and views, and debate on best ways forward.
- To launch of document ‘Knowing Where to Look', a guide to help practitioners access and understand a range of evidence.
- To review impacts of one attempt to disseminate the evidence to children, young people and families – Choosing What's Best for You.
Info to download:
Presentations:
- Steps Towards Effective Child and Family Care: The Next Five Years - Crispin Day, National CAMHS Review, Institute of Psychiatry
- Combining Evidence Based Practice and Practice Based Evidence: some tentative thoughts for practitioners and commissioners - Miranda Wolpert, Director, CAMHS EBPU
- Some Challenges in Interpreting Evidence in Studies of Psychotherapy Outcome: what's the way forward? - Peter Fonagy, UCL & Anna Freud Centre
- Evidence-Based Practice in Schools - Neil Humphrey, Lecturer in Education, University of Manchester
- Hearing the Voice of the Child - Carly Raby, Young People Participation Consultant
- From Evidence Based Practice to Practice Based Evidence: improving outcomes is the bottom line - Barry Duncan, Co-Director, Institute for the Study of Psychotherapeutic Change, USA
Me and My School evaluation project 
The CAMHS EBPU is leading a major 3-year research project exploring the impact of the government initiative to provide targeted mental health in schools across England. This research is being undertaken in collaboration with colleagues at Durham University, the University of Manchester, the University of Leicester, University of York and the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London. The project is funded by the Department for Children Schools and Families (DCSF) and starts in April 2008, continuing to April 2011.
Info to download:
- For further information about the Me and My School evaluation project, please have a look at the following website http://www.meandmyschool.info/
- DCSF article on the larger Targeted Mental Health in Schools project
What Schools Can Teach CAMHS
The CAMHS EBPU is involved in a collaborative research project looking at how to improve links between education systems and child mental health providers. The project is Department of Health-funded and is due to run from 2007 to 2010. Professor Panos Vostanis of the University of Leicester leads this research.
Click on the images below to download PDF versions of the publications.
STOP PRESS - new publication out July 2008:
Knowing Where to Look: How to find the evidence you need (2008)
A booklet to help you find, analyse and use information to develop and deliver services to support the emotional, psychological and mental health needs of children and young people. Authored by Paula Lavis and published in partnership with YoungMinds and the Department for Children, Schools & Families.
Very limited numbers of hard copies are available - for further details please contact Jo Edgar at the National CAMHS Support Service by clicking here.
Drawing on the Evidence: Advice for child mental health professionals (2006)
A booklet that explains the latest research in this area to busy practitioners to help them make appropriate treatment choices. 10,000 copies have now been distributed across the UK and beyond.
Please note that there are no more hard copies available. However, please feel free to download and distribute the PDF version.
Choosing What's Best For You: What scientists have found helps children and young people who are sad, worried or troubled (2007)
A booklet that explains the latest research in this area to children and families to help them make treatment choices.
More than 23,000 copies have so far been distributed across the UK and beyond.
Related docs:
- November 07 reissue amendments - background information
- Developing the booklet - how it was developed, and how you can inform the development of future editions
- STOP PRESS: Feedback about Choosing received up to June 2008
STOP PRESS July 08: Please note we now have NO MORE HARD COPIES. However if you would like to be contacted about possible future editions and other publications please email your details to us at ebpu@annafreud.org
We continue to welcome comments and feedback, which will be considered when we undertake a review of Choosing... from July 2008.
A Mental Health Care Pathway for Children and Young People with Learning Disabilities: A resource pack for service planners and practitioners (2007)
A resource pack for services to help them become more accessible to children with learning disabilities.
Click here to download a flyer containing info about the resource pack.
UK government-funded services or charities can order up to 30 hard copies for free. Please contact us if you would require more. To order, please email your name, organisation and postal address to ebpu@annafreud.org quoting “LD Resource Pack”.
For the abbreviated, interactive PowerPoint version of the Care Pathway click here.
To save this PowerPoint presentation to your computer for adaptation for local use, right click over this link and select “Save Target As…” (Each step of the Care Pathway has a hyperlink which clicks through to further information - to activate the links open this PowerPoint file in Slide Show mode).
Outcomes-Based Leadership in CAMHS 
The first CAMHS Service Improvement and Leadership Course (SILC), a short course held at University College, London (UCL), was completed in January 2007. It was attended by managers in the NHS to help them develop services that best meet the needs of children and young people with mental health difficulties. Its successor course, re-titled Outcomes-Based Leadership in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, started in October 2007.
We are currently running the Outcomes-Based Leadership in CAMHS course 2008-09.
UCL Postgraduate Certificate/Diploma/MSc
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and other Outcomes-Based Interventions with Children and Young People (CBTOBI)
We are delighted to announce the launch of new courses in September 2008 which provide training for professionals in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and other Outcomes-Based Interventions with Children and Young People. This initiative is in partnership with the Department of Clinical, Educational & Health Psychology at UCL and Islington PCT CAMHS. CLICK HERE for more information, including a course brochure and application information.
Informing service development
Promoting routine outcome evaluation
The CAMHS EBPU works closely with, and supports the work of the CAMHS Outcome Research Consortium (CORC), which is an independent membership organisation. CORC is also based at the Anna Freud Centre, and aims to set up systems to evaluate outcomes across child mental health services. Several members of staff work part-time for the CAMHS EBPU and part-time for CORC.
Click here for more information.
Advising on information systems for CAMHS
The National CAMHS Dataset (NCDS) was originally disseminated in 2004 via CORC and the National CAMHS Support Service. This dataset identifies the key elements or information fields that services need to collect electronically, in order to develop a meaningful care record for children and young people with mental health problems. The NCDS was further developed during a CAMHS EBPU-led project in 2006, one of a number of Do Once and Share (DOAS) projects commissioned by the NHS.
- To download the latest version of the NCDS click here.
- To view the final report of the DOAS project click here.
Informing the development of accessible services
Another 2006 Do Once and Share project developed a model of a care pathway for children and young people with a learning disability and mental health needs. See Publications above for the Resource Pack which has been developed out of the project.
Click here to link to further documents relating to both the above Do Once and Share projects.
Advice and collaboration with other bodies
The unit offers advice when requested to the Department of Health, the Department for Children, Schools & Families, and other national and international bodies as required. It looks to form good collaborations with other relevant organisations.
Director: Dr Miranda Wolpert
Research Fellow: Dr Sevasti-Melissa Nolas
Unit co-ordinator: Amy Flint
Information Officer: Paula Lavis
With additional help from occasional interns.
The CAMHS EBPU reports to a Board within University College, London, currently comprising of:
- Professor Peter Fonagy (Freud Memorial Professor of Psychoanalysis and Director of the Sub-Department of Clinical Health Psychology, University College London)
- Stephen Pilling (Director, Centre for Research and Effectiveness (CORE), University College London)
- Professor Tony Roth (Joint Course Director, Doctoral Course in Clinical Psychology, University College London)
Aims and aspirations of the CAMHS EBPU
Although we are a small unit, we are ambitious in scope and our aspirations include the following:
- To present research-based evidence with a tentativeness appropriate to the limitations of the findings
- To present the evidence in ways that can best interface with natural ways people take on new knowledge (this may include detailed exploration of the best ways to present and share information in this area).
- To encourage practice that incorporates an appropriate awareness of the complexities involved in using evidence and outcome data to inform practice.
- To examine the evidence base for a range of phenomena (including service design issues i.e. not just a focus on clinical interventions as such)
- To look to draw on a range of academic specialisms including cognitive psychology, sociology, systems theories as appropriate
Ethos of the unit
- All research is provisional
- All research raises as many questions as it answers
- All research is difficult to interpret and to draw clear conclusions from
- Qualitative research may be vital to elaborate experience, suggest narratives for understanding phenomena and generate hypotheses but it can't be taken to prove anything
- Quantitative research may be able to show hard findings but can rarely (never?) give clear answers to complex questions
And yet, despite all the challenges, it is still worth attempting to encourage an evidence-based approach, since the alternative is to continue to develop practice based only on assumption and belief.
CAMHS Expert advisory group
We are grateful to the following who act as part of an advisory group to the CAMHS EBPU:
- Dr Richard Bartholomew (Chief Research Officer, Department for Children, Schools and Families)
- Dr Michael Clark (Research Manager, Care Services Improvement Partnership)
- Professor David Cottrell (Professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Leeds)
- Professor Robert Goodman (Professor Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London)
- Sir Muir Gray (Director of Clinical Knowledge, Process and Safety, NHS Connecting for Health)
- Sir Michael Rutter (Professor of Developmental Psychopathology, Social, Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre (MRC), Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London)
- Andre Tomlin (Director of Knowledge Services, Centre for Evidence Based Medicine, Oxford)
For more information on the work of the unit please contact:
CAMHS Evidence-Based Practice Unit
University College London & Anna Freud Centre
21 Maresfield Gardens
London NW3 5SD
Email: ebpu@annafreud.org
Tel: 020 7443 2218