The monthly data file contains data specifically relating to children and young people in contact with mental health services.
Two approaches have been used to identify children and young people in contact with mental health services – one by age, and one by type of service.
For age splits measures the designation of the measures is suffixed by a lower case letter (i.e. ‘a’, ‘b’, etc.). For example, MH01a - People in contact with mental health services aged 0 to 18 at the end of the Reporting Period.
For service split measures the designation of the measure activity related to a Children and Young Persons Mental Health Services are preceded by ‘CYP’. For example, CYP01 - People in contact with children and young people’s mental health services at the end of the Reporting Period.
The annual data file includes an annual measure (and associated breakdowns) of the number of children and young people, regardless of when their referral started, receiving at least two contacts (including indirect contacts) and where their first contact occurs before their 18th birthday based on MHSDS. This is the official statistic for children and young people’s access to mental health services.
In 2017-18 and 2018-19 NHS Digital published the results of the CYP Validation exercise, a separate collection jointly developed and commissioned by NHS Digital and NHS England and NHS Improvement, in order to produce the most accurate picture of national end of year position for children and young people’s access to mental health service. The results of the validation exercise were the official statistic and superseded all other statistics produced throughout the year. These publications are available within this publication series.
Following the introduction of the multiple submission window model (MSWM), increased providers submissions, data quality improvements and developments to the children and young people’s access measure, NHS Digital are publishing the children and young people’s access to mental health services, annual statistics, based on MHSDS within this publication (MHS69 - The number of children and young people, regardless of when their referral started, receiving at least two contacts (including indirect contacts) and where their first contact occurs before their 18th birthday).