Overseas Working Group in Child and Adolescent Mental Health

The Royal College of Psychiatrists set up an Overseas Working Party chaired by Dr Bob Kendall. The final report of the working party recommended, among other things, setting up an Overseas Working Group in Child and Adolescent Mental Health. Accordingly such a working group has been formed with a view to undertaking the following tasks:

1. (1) To identify key people and networks associated with Child and Adolescent Mental Health in various countries, to contact them in order to assess the training needs in their networks and to co-construct training programmes that can be cascaded further.

2. (2) To explore the possibility of designing a core multi-disciplinary training pack in child and adolescent mental health that would be relevant and applicable in a variety of countries.

3. (3) To encourage and connect all those interested in helping with such ventures through Focus Newsletter, Faculty Newsletter, the College website, etc.

4. (4) To explore the possibility of using some of the unfilled specialist registrar posts or creating some other short-term clinical training experiences in the UK for overseas professionals.

The main aim of the group is to look at how the College may support and facilitate the development of child mental health services by providing resources and support for multi-disciplinary training. It was felt that key people and networks in a variety of countries should be approached with a view to developing dialogues that will be fruitful to all concerned so that they can learn from each other's experiences. The respondents can comment either from their local, regional, national and/or supranational perspectives. To help structure their responses a few questions, such as the following, should be listed:

1. (1) Are there any child mental health services in existence? If no, what would help to develop such services. If yes, where are such services currently located (i.e. within what type of facilities e.g. paediatrics, maternal and child health, psychiatry, specialised resources in very remote tertiary settings or more widely available?)

2. (2) What is the mental health training currently available in your context/country that is child specific and for what disciplines? Is the training pre/post registration? Are there child mental health inputs into postgraduate psychiatry and/or paediatric programmes?

3. (3) What is your view of the objectives of the College Overseas Group? Do you consider that such a group could have a useful input to meet your country's training needs?

4. (4) What do you think about the idea of having access to a modular training content? If it seems useful, does it need to be in a printed format only or would the facilities to use video material accompanying a printed manual be available? If not, is this because of the need for content to be translated into local languages and/or lack of technology or resources?

5. (5) Is there a need for direct contact-based clinical experiential training? How and where can it be best organised and for what period?

The Overseas Working Group in Child and Adolescent Mental Health would be extremely grateful for any suggestions and relevant contacts in different countries, including low income countries, who could be approached for the above. Readers may also be able to comment on the above issues themselves and pass on this request to other relevant associations encouraging them to respond. Those interested in helping this important venture in any way (e.g. creating links abroad, helping with designing training packs, providing training, creating training places) should contact the Honorary Secretary, Dr Kedar Dwivedi, 8 Notre Dame Mews, Northampton NN1 2BG (tel: 01604 604 608; fax: 01604 604 531).