2015 GIFT's young sessional workers mystery shop CAMHS websites, testing them against a range of items including how accessible are they to how young person friendly is the information

1. CAMHS Websites – Secret Shopper
16th January 2015

2. Introduction
 We were asked to look at whether CAMHS websites contained
information about complaints
 As we were doing this, we thought we’d extend this and look
at what information CAMHS websites have for young people –
both about CAMHS and about children and young people’s
mental health issues
 We took the list of CAMHS partnerships in CYP IAPT, chose an
equal number from each wave and our Young Sessional
Workers agreed to look at them
 Some YSWs took more than their allocated partnership –
doing more work – and looked at those sites also
 Overall, we looked at 59 out of the 82 CYP IAPT partnerships

3. The Approach:
Mystery Shopping
What is it?

4. Mystery shopping
• A social research tool
• Measure the quality of a service
• Gather opinion about a service
• Mystery shopper’s identity not known by the
service being evaluated
• Mystery shopper performs specific tasks such as
purchasing a product, asking questions, behaving
in a certain way
• Provides feedback about their experiences

5. Advantages and Disadvantages to
Mystery Shopping
• Can provide a better
understanding of the user
perspective
• Limited to assessing
services, cannot advise on
what needs to change
• Limited short-term
involvement
• Recruiting, training and
supporting mystery
shoppers is labour intensive
• Resources to reward or
recognise
• Potential to be dangerous
or unethical

6. So.......
• We don’t want to put children and young people
in a position where they are impersonating or
feigning difficulties
But – could they go as far as
• Looking for information on the internet – is it
there? Is information about CAMHS accessible
and easy to find?
• Phoning up for information - what happens?
• What are the links between schools and CAMHS?
• The environment

7. So, we did!
• Method
Please use 'Google' as your search engine.
Please use the phrase 'mental health services in
[insert partnership name]‘
Questionnaire set up on surveymonkey which
YSWs completed as they looked at the websites

8. The sites we examined:

9. The first page.
…had to search for
children’s mental
health services in…
then it came up with a
massive list of
contacts – YP wouldn’t
know where to start
…website
completely
adult
orientated..
…was labelled
as children’s
community
services…

10. The first page:

11. Getting beyond the first page:
‘everything
was aimed at
adults’
Average number of
clicks to find
information about
CAMHS is 2.74

12. CAMHS Pages

13. A text cloud of the comments made
about the CAMHS pagesProduced more
for professionals
where to refer
people
Split up into sections for
children for teens and
for parents. Looks fab!
Professional
but lacking
warmth
/care
The use of tier three
and not even really
explaining what that
was. Use of 'severe' as
well is both kind of
degrading and
excluding. where do
moderate people go?!
Would they realise they
need early
intervention?
PDF's to download.

14. The ’looks fab’ website: Bolton

15. Information on the CAMHS pages

16. The ‘very good’ information about children and
young people’s mental health issues (Ealing)

17. Information about CAMHS

18. There are some things that make a website not
seem that young-person friendly
• Using acronyms and words YP will not understand i.e multidisciplinary
• Only says what problems they help with. A young person might not
understand this language. Nothing about symptoms etc.
• Doesn't look like young people have been involved in making the
webpage. Formal. Block texts.
• seems to be aimed only at professionals- mention of tiers and
commissioning
• Loads of good information, but the website is very confusing as the there
are loads of metal health teams depending on georaphical area, type and
severity of illness so there is loads of links- i found the website very
confusing and hard to navigate
• clearly aimed at adults
• Not a lot of information
• Aimed at adults.
• Definitely aimed at the parents of the child.
• Address and contact details only
• Basic, not aimed at young people.
• Chance to get artwork on the website.

19. But, there are things that make a
website seem young-person friendly
• Designed by service users
• Says about celebrities who have had mental health problems- really
thought about the info young people want to know.
• Really great site because its called CAMHS and me, it may be hard
to find if you don’t know what CAMHS is. This should be the first
page that you find on Google
• Explains what different words mean. Not too much info.
• Like the 'Jargon Buster' section
• Doesn't mention CAMHS just 'Children and Young People's Services'
A few telephone numbers and that's it. Very vague what these
services actually are. So much more could be done here. Offers,
little information, that's not easy to access.
• Clearly aimed at child or young person
• Addresses the young person directly in an appropriate way
• There was a video to watch titled "what is CAMHS" which is more
YP friendly.

20. Information on the CAMHS Pages

21. Information about children and young
people’s mental health problems

22. Information for young people

23. Information for parents

24. Making a Complaint
If you want to
make a
complaint, talk
to staff
…not YP specific.
….language of
CQC for first link
isn’t YP friendly

25. Good example: Complaints: RDASH – their CYP’s
MHS page

26. When you click on ‘make a complaint’

27. Advocacy

28. Any thoughts?