How digitally enabled therapies transform services for young people
Health tech
23 February 2022
By Emily
Children and young people’s (CYP) mental health services are growing and diversifying. Many now give young people digital options to access and receive support. We spoke to Helen McGlinchey, Service Manager and Clinical Lead for Northpoint Wellbeing’s schools service. She explains how her team delivers digitally enabled therapies to young people in Yorkshire.
Interoperability: iaptus CYP and Prism partners
As new digital options emerge, services must ensure they work together to provide a continuous care pathway. We actively integrate with other systems and offer a platform that connects iaptus with digital therapy providers.
The Prism feature in iaptus connects mental health services to digital therapy programmes. It helps services diversify care and give patients more choice. We offer digital therapy programmes from over 20 partners through Prism. and we recently added digital therapy programmes for CYPMH services with Silvercloud.
Prior to the pandemic, SilverCloud were developing CBT guided self-help programmes to support children and young people. They worked with Northpoint Wellbeing to pilot programmes for anxiety in their services in Yorkshire. Like many services, Northpoint Wellbeing finds that anxiety affects many children and young people they work with. The pandemic has made this issue worse. They decided to add the ‘Space from Anxiety’ digital programme to their service model.
“Anxiety has always been a prevalent issue in our services, even more so after the pandemic. Having a digital CBT-based programme for young people with anxiety felt such a helpful additional aspect to our service model. It’s now very much an integrated part of our offer.” Helen McGlinchey, Northpoint Wellbeing
Benefits of integrating digitally enabled therapies into your CYP service
A few of the key benefits of referring patients to digitally enabled therapies via iaptus CYP and Prism are:
- Providing choice to young people who prefer digital options or want to be seen more quickly.
- Facilitating speedy referral on to digital programmes and a continuous care pathway for the young people who opt to use them.
- Reducing waiting times by offering immediate access to treatment to suitable young people.
- Keep a single digital care record with progress notes and outcomes sent directly to the young person’s iaptus CYP record.
- Enabling therapists to monitor and evaluate progress and use the data to inform their sessions with the child or young person.
- Help the service reflect on how and where digital care works best across cases.
Digitally enabled therapies using iaptus and Prism
Digital interventions can be integrated by service providers into their care pathways at different stages, working alongside the traditional face-to-face therapies they offer in community and education settings.
Offering young people the option of digitally enabled therapies soon after they are referred into their service means that they can receive support while they wait for face-to-face therapy. The young person can then have access to coping strategies and insights from the programme, before starting face-to-face therapy. Find out more.
“Predominantly, it’s early intervention at the front end of our service offer but it works so flexibly, for example if we receive a referral for a young person where they have an anxiety presentation and they’re open to giving the digital anxiety programme a go. It is absolutely key for us in terms of managing waiting lists and works well for those who are on a waiting list for one to one therapy. We find that it helps them to use strategies and insight from the digital programme while they are waiting.” Helen McGlinchey, Northpoint Wellbeing
If a service provider receives a referral for a young person struggling with anxiety, and the young person agrees to try the digital programme, the service can provide care within a week. Digital programmes also allow young people to access support whenever and wherever they choose.
“With the anxiety programme for young people, they can download the app to any device so it feels very accessible. It gives more choice for those young people who prefer a digital way of working. They can access the programme at any point that suits them, it’s not set to a particular session time.” Helen McGlinchey, Northpoint Wellbeing
SilverCloud also supports parents and carers through its ‘Supporting an Anxious Child or Teen’ programme. For example, if a young person attends face-to-face therapy, their parent or carer can work through the digital programme simultaneously.
Northpoint Wellbeing has found combining digital and in-person therapy to be really effective and they’ve been able to integrate it into their service offering a way that best meets the needs of young people and their families.
“An important element has been the link developed between Mayden and Silvercloud which means we can reflect on all of our data from the anxiety programmes. The two systems communicate with each other so all of that data gets pulled through (to iaptus CYP for us to view.)” Helen McGlinchey, Northpoint Wellbeing
Therapists can quickly and easily refer young people to digital therapy options directly from the individual’s clinical record in iaptus CYP. The system sends progress notes securely back to iaptus CYP for monitoring and reporting. iaptus CYP securely stores and manages all data from the young person’s engagement with the digital therapy programme. The service provider can regularly review each young person’s progress, their stage of care, and programme completion. Clinicians can then reflect on this data and use it to inform their sessions with the young people in their care.
Get in touch
Transform your service for young people: Many children and young people’s mental health services, such as Northpoint Wellbeing, are expanding and diversifying their offerings. These services remain committed to providing high-quality care to children, young people, and families in need. Digitally enabled therapies help services evolve efficiently and meet rising demand while maintaining effective, personalised support.
If you’re interested in integrating digital options into your care pathways, please get in touch.