Dr. Amir Niazi:

I have to accept that, among my colleagues in the CAMHS teams, there has been a sense of burnout, especially in the last 18 months with the Maskey report and now with the commission report. To give the committee an idea of the problem, they are under pressure to look at their waiting lists and to see more and more children, which they are definitely doing. On top of this, the reviews we are carrying out are having a major impact. For example, I refer to the prescribing audit carried out on the 73 teams. Because we do not have a very good IT system, there are teams that are still working with paper and pencil and taking out the charts to look at the information required.

What was noticed was that on average, a team used 25 hours of clinical time for one audit. If we multiply these 25 hours by 73 teams it gives an idea of the number of clinical hours used for one audit. Seven audits have been done in CAMHS. With this work, on top of the clinical work and all of the pressures from the media and everything else, there is definitely a sense of burnout. We hope that with improved governance, with the new assistant national director and new clinical lead, and now after all of these reviews, people will have a sense that they are providing a good service to our patients and the families who require them, and that they will have a sense of satisfaction that we are achieving better mental health. In the past 18 months I have definitely got a sense of burnout from my colleagues.