Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 11 October 2023
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health
Review of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services: Discussion
Mr. David Walsh:
I will take it from the top down. I am sorry; it is a long chain. The chief executive delegates responsibility to the chief operating officer and I get a delegation from him. That delegation goes from me to the chief officers across the nine CHOs. Each of those has a head of service for mental health. This covers both CAMHS and other mental health services. To support me in the discharge of my duties, I have a mental health operations team. Up until very recently, this covered the full remit of mental health. With recent developments, however, we now have a dedicated child and youth mental health office, with Dr. Burke and Mr. Kelly.
Within CHOs, then, the structure is that there is an executive clinical director in each of those. Four CHOs also have clinical directors specifically for CAMHS services; the others do not. In those services that do not have a specific CAMHS clinical director, that service comes directly under the remit of the executive clinical director, ECD. That is the structure.
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