Cost Effectiveness

Cost effective, timely and appropriate interventions

Children and young people who have complex and multiple difficulties, and may stay with services for a long time, have been identified in numerous studies as being the most costly in terms of their use of resources. They are also precisely the type of patient who can most benefit from the highly skilled intervention of Child and Adolescent Psychotherapists. In 2012 the type and level of disturbance encountered by specialist child mental health professionals will mostly be severe, enduring and complex, and may involve problems that cut across healthcare, education, social care and youth justice provision.

Allied to evidence (see Research) that improvements are sustained or even enhanced at long-term follow-up this means that it is possible to demonstrate cost savings for services in both the short and medium to long-term by providing specialist and time-defined interventions for these children, their families and the network of services in contact with them. This approach only improves outcomes for the children but enables a better, more targeted use of resources.

The attached Guide to Contemporary Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy provides extensive detail about evidence based and cost-effective interventions for children, young people and their families with complex, severe and enduring emotional, behavioural and relational mental health difficulties. The data identify where savings can be made across four key areas:

• Short term impacts where local services are unable to provide an effective intervention
• Costs to commissioners where additional specialist services have to be purchased
• Escalating costs where difficulties are not resolved or contained
• The impact on services and staff