Dorset is now ‘home to one of the leading inpatient mental health services for young people in the country’, says the Dorset Children and Adolescent Mental Health Team (CAMHS), based at Pebble Lodge, Bournemouth, and run by Dorset HealthCare.
The team has just been awarded QNIC accreditation. QNIC stands for Quality Network for Inpatient CAMHS, and is a Royal College of Psychiatry accreditation scheme, which sees peers countrywide carry out rigorous inspections of mental health services in England – evaluating everything from cleanliness, care, and the quality of the environment, to staffing and training. Dorset HealthCare says that out of 30 Trusts inspected across the country last year, only four passed, with Pebble Lodge the first to achieve the accreditation first time.
Ward manager, Naomi Jenkins, said: “We are delighted to become a centre of excellence for CAMHS. Not many people realise we treat young people aged 12-18 for everything from anxiety, depression and self-harm to psychosis, bi-polar, severe mental illness, and emotional difficulties, all done under one roof. We even have our own school so that young people don’t miss out on their education.”