The King’s Maudsley Partnership welcomes the commitments to prioritising children’s mental health set out in the 10 Health Plan. The plan calls for a ‘joined up’ approach to children and young people’s mental health.  It’s an urgent challenge that we all have to respond to: schools, communities, the workplace, the third sector and the NHS. It is vital that the Government has a strong evidence base for the policies and interventions implemented to deliver the plan.  

We agree that there are many opportunities for reaching more children and families than ever through effective use of public services data, better mobilisation of knowledge through digital platforms, and evidence based digital interventions.  

To achieve this the Government must bridge the gap between these technological advancements and sustaining their adoption in clinical practice, especially within the proposed integrated neighbourhood teams and Young Futures Hubs. At King’s Maudsley Partnership, our CAMHS Digital Lab have been pioneering the use of digital technology, showing how it can streamline care, in part by allowing many assessments to be done safely and securely at home. The Digital Lab is leading studies into the digital delivery of care, showing what works and what doesn’t work. Innovations such as those happening within the CAMHS Digital Lab will be crucial to the Government being able to successfully achieve its aims. 

We are pleased that the Government has reconfirmed its commitment today to expand Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) in schools with an ambition of 100% coverage by 2029/30. Investing in MHSTs is a powerful tool in improving children’s mental health. King’s Maudsley Partnership is home to a leading provider of MHSTs across South London, and to those delivering its national training programme.  Our academic teams have developed and rigorously tested classroom-based workshops for young people to help them build skills to tackle stress and symptoms of depression. Such evidence-based programs are key to success.  We are keen to see a long-term plan for investing in MHSTs and the workforce delivering it to enable the Government to achieve its ambitions. 

The King’s Maudsley Partnership for Children and Young People will transform our understanding and treatment of young people’s mental health through a unique collaboration between specialist clinicians from the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and leading academics at King’s College London. Learn more about us.

The paper details a working service model based within the King’s Maudsley Partnership, sharing how it could be adopted elsewhere to benefit child mental health services.

What is the CAMHS Digital Lab?

Digital innovations and developments in data science could help to make mental health services more efficient and meet growing demand for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). However, there remains a significant gap between these technological advancements and their adoption in clinical practice. To bridge this gap, the CAMHS Digital Lab are pioneering a novel service model for embedding research and innovation into CAMHS. The CAMHS Digital Lab aims to streamline clinical processes, provide population insights, and offer novel ways of understanding young people’s needs, therefore enabling CAMHS to be more efficient and effective while reducing costs. The CAMHS Digital Lab is part-funded by the NIHR Maudsley BRC.

What does this new paper share?

This new article in the journal Child Adolescent Mental Health shares in detail the four workstreams within the CAMHS Digital Lab:

• Population and clinical analytics
• Digital therapeutics and assessment
• Data science and discovery
• Education, outreach and training

Each of these workstreams supports delivery of clinical services and allows the team to answer important research questions in child and adolescent mental health. The article also considers how other services across the UK, and even internationally, could adopt or adapt these approaches to meet their local needs.

Among other things, the lab uses data collected by South London and Maudsley CAMHS and other public services to understand mental health needs, identify risk factors, highlight inequalities and inform decision making by clinicians and service managers. The lab looks to digital solutions for improving health intelligence, informing service delivery and meeting local needs. The team is multidisciplinary, bringing together expertise from across academic and clinical services.

Read the full article here:

Wickersham, A., Bennett, W., Firth, Z., Colling, C., Penhallow, J., Downs, J. and (2025), Technology Matters: A model for translating digital and data science innovations into Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. Child Adolescent Mental Health https://doi.org/10.1111/camh.70003

We are proud to share that Professor Edmund Sonuga-Barke, alongside colleagues from RE-STAR and members of the Youth Researcher Panel, have been awarded the Editor’s Choice award from the British Journal of Psychiatry (BJPsych) for his paper “Participatory translational science of neurodivergence: model for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autism research”.  

The Editor’s Choice award is given each year to celebrate outstanding and innovative research that makes a significant contribution to psychiatry and mental health science. 

In the award-winning paper, Professor Sonuga-Barke and the RE-STAR team set out a new approach to translational science for neurodevelopmental conditions like ADHD and autism. Central to this model is the meaningful involvement of neurodivergent young people, ensuring their experiences and insights help shape every stage of the research process, from generating new ideas to interpreting results. 

Speaking about the award, Professor Sonuga-Barke said: 

“The RE-STARs are overjoyed to receive this ‘Editor’s Choice’ award, from such a prestigious journal as the British Journal of Psychiatry, too. 

The paper in question, co-authored by RE-STAR academics and Youth Researcher Panel members, describes our pioneering new approach to the translational science of neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism and ADHD which places the insights and experiences of neurodivergent young people themselves at the very heart of our scientific endeavour. 

This approach has invigorated RE-STAR, allowing academic researchers and neurodivergent young people to work together to stimulate new ideas and hypotheses, develop new methods and collect and explore new interpretation. 

There is no doubt, in my mind that deepening the participation neurodivergent young people in this way, has been absolutely central to RE-STAR’s scientific success as it attempts to understand the origins of adolescent depression risk in ADHD and autism. 

From a personal point of view it’s been such a privilege to both lead and learn from such an incredibly talented and diverse set of people. 

Our hope is that this honour from the BJP will encourage other research teams to recognise the scientific value of deep participatory approaches and have the courage to adopt them.” 

Click here to read the paper