Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) waiting times
Quarter ending December 2024
Accredited official statistics
- Published
- 04 March 2025 (Latest release)
- Type
- Statistical report
- Author
- Public Health Scotland
About this release
This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) provides an update of how long people waited to start treatment with Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in NHSScotland for the quarter ending December 2024.
CAMHS are multi-disciplinary teams that provide treatment and/or interventions for children and young people experiencing mental health problems. Where a child or young person is awaiting an assessment for a neurodevelopmental condition such as autistic spectrum disorder (ASD), or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), they may not be appropriate for CAMHS. Please see the neurodevelopmental activity section of the data quality document (below) and the national neurodevelopmental specification: principles and standards of care for more information.
Note this document reports on the accredited aggregate CAMHS collection and waiting times. Data should not be compared to the CAMHS data presented in the statistics in development patient level Child, Adolescent, and Psychological Therapies National Dataset (CAPTND).
Main points
For the quarter ending December 2024:
- 90.6% of children and young people started treatment within 18 weeks of referral, which is an increase from 89.1% for the previous quarter and from 83.8% for the same quarter ending December 2023. The Scottish Government standard which states that 90% of children and young people should start treatment within 18 weeks of referral to CAMHS was achieved.
- 3,812 children and young people started treatment at CAMHS in Scotland. This is a 0.3% increase from the 3,801 starting treatment in the previous quarter, and a 15.9% decrease from the 4,531 starting treatment in the quarter ending December 2023.
- 50% of the children and young people starting treatment started within 4 weeks of referral, which is a decrease from 6 weeks the previous quarter and 6 weeks for quarter ending December 2023.
- 4,362 children and young people were waiting to start treatment at quarter ending December 2024 which is an increase of 3.1% (131) compared to 4,231 in the previous quarter, and a decrease of 20.9% (1,155) from 5,517 waiting in the same quarter ending December 2023.
- 8,919 children and young people were referred to CAMHS in Scotland in the quarter ending December 2024. This is a 19.9% (1,481) increase from 7,438 compared to the previous quarter, and a decrease of 6.4% (608) from 9,527 referred in the same quarter ending December 2023.
Further information
The next release of this publication will be 03 June 2025.
General enquiries
If you have an enquiry relating to this publication, please contact Brendan de Moor at phs.camh@phs.scot.
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If you have a media enquiry relating to this publication, please contact the Communications and Engagement team.
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Older versions of this publication
Versions of this publication released before 16 March 2020 may be found on the Data and Intelligence, Health Protection Scotland or Improving Health websites.