CAMHS and ASD Referrals & Rejections 2018- March 19th 2024

Reference: 23-24536

Date response sent: 12/04/2024

Details of enquiry

I am requesting information pertaining to.NHS referrals, and Referrals to specialist (tier 3) CAHMS.  please respond with data pertaining to individual referrals not individual people i.e. if one person was referred more than once then please count the total number of referrals

1. How many referrals were made to your CAMHS services from 2018-19 March 2024? Please give individual figures for each year.

2. How many referrals to your CAMHS services from 2018-19 March 2024 involved children/teenagers with an existing autism diagnosis, ie they weren’t being referred for the purpose of an autism diagnosis. Please give individual figures for each year.

a. If possible, could you also please provide the proportion (%) these referrals made up of the total number of referrals each year?

3. How many referrals were ‘rejected’ (i.e. not accepted by CAMHS/referred to another service) from 2018-19 March 2024? Please give individual figures for each year, include ‘rejections’ that took place either before an individual was ever assessed by CAMHS or immediately after an assessment took place.

a. If possible, could you also please provide information on why the referrals were rejected?

4. How many referrals of diagnosed autistic children/teenagers were ‘rejected’ from 2018-19 March 2024? Please give individual figures for each year.

a. If possible, could you also provide the proportion (%) these rejections made up of the total number of rejections for each year please.

Please could you provide all of this information in calendar years.

Response sent

1. How many referrals were made to your CAMHS services from 2018-19 March 2024? Please give individual figures for each year.

2. How many referrals to your CAMHS services from 2018-19 March 2024 involved children/teenagers with an existing autism diagnosis, ie they weren’t being referred for the purpose of an autism diagnosis. Please give individual figures for each year.

a. If possible, could you also please provide the proportion (%) these referrals made up of the total number of referrals each year?

We are unable to answer your questions 2 and 4.

• We confirm that the Trust would hold data on CAMHS patients’ previous autism diagnoses, where provided by other healthcare agencies. However, these would be held as notes within individual patient files, which cannot be electronically searched nor collated through any automated process, and would therefore require a manual search of the records of all patients whose referrals fell within the period.
• We cannot electronically run automated reports to provide previous autism diagnosis data, and these reports could only be produced manually, which would take around 20 minutes to search each patient record and extract the data, where provided, ie over 33 hours for just 100 files, thereby exceeding the statutory limit on resources provisioned under FOIA. Accordingly, we will not be processing this question further, and have engaged s12 exemption of FOIA; ‘Cost of compliance exceeds the appropriate limit’.
• Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA)

-makes provision for NHS organisations to refuse requests for information where the cost of processing (which includes determining whether the Trust holds the information, locating, and then extracting it) exceeds £450, or 18 hours of work from one member of staff calculated at a generic rate of £25/hour.

Accordingly, the time required to process questions 2 above and question 4 below fall outside this limit, and so by engaging exemption from disclosure of this data under s12 of FOIA, the Trust will not be processing  either of these two questions.

3. How many referrals were ‘rejected’ (i.e. not accepted by CAMHS/referred to another service) from 2018-19 March 2024? Please give individual figures for each year, include ‘rejections’ that took place either before an individual was ever assessed by CAMHS or immediately after an assessment took place.

a. If possible, could you also please provide information on why the referrals were rejected?

4. How many referrals of diagnosed autistic children/teenagers were ‘rejected’ from 2018-19 March 2024? Please give individual figures for each year.

a. If possible, could you also provide the proportion (%) these rejections made up of the total number of rejections for each year please.

Please see our response to Q2 above.  We are unable to provide this data, as it would need to be manually searched for,and extracted and have engaged exemption 12 of FOIA; as explained above.