The Psychiatric Nurses Association is calling on the HSE to bring in new measures to allow faster access to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.
The calls come in response to new figures showing an increase in the number of children and young people waiting over a year to access CAMHS services.
They want advanced nurse practitioners to carry out initial assessments to the service and also want day hospitals to be used instead of acute hospital admission.
Provision of mental health services for children and adults has been a major issue in the North West.
General Secretary of the Psychiatric Nurses Association Peter Hughes says if the current trend continues, there’ll be more than 3,000 on the waiting list before the end of the year:
Speaking to Ocean FM News, Mr Hughes outlined how recommendations made more than a decade ago for the provision of mental health services for children and adolescents have still not been implemented:
