Community & Mental Health Trust
Children and Young People’s Mental Health Services (CAMHS) were experiencing sustained increases in referral demand, rising waiting lists and growing operational pressure across community services. Service leaders had limited visibility of how future demand would impact workforce capacity, referral flow and waiting times, making it difficult to plan sustainable interventions or assess the likely impact of service changes.
Existing reporting focused primarily on historic activity and backlog positions, with limited capability to model future demand, conversion rates, referral growth or workforce scenarios. Variability between teams and pathways also made it difficult to identify where capacity constraints and bottlenecks were developing.
Benson Health integrated referral, activity, workforce and pathway data into a standardised operational model to analyse demand, flow and service capacity across CAMHS pathways. Historical referral trends, caseload growth, waiting list movement and discharge patterns were modelled to forecast future service pressure and identify likely capacity gaps under different scenarios.
The programme enabled operational and strategic teams to test the impact of workforce changes, pathway redesign and demand growth assumptions on waiting times, backlog trajectories and clinical capacity. Reporting also highlighted variation between localities, referral sources and service pathways.
The programme enabled the organisation to move from reactive backlog reporting towards proactive operational planning and demand modelling. Service leaders gained a clearer understanding of future demand pressures and the interventions required to improve waiting times, strengthen flow and support more sustainable service delivery across CAMHS pathways.
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