Cyberattack leaves HSE in the dark on children’s mental health in Galway
From this week's Galway City Tribune - The full extent of the waiting list for community mental health services for children is unknown because of the cyberattack on the HSE.
There were 48 young people in Galway, Mayo and Roscommon on a waiting list last March for the community Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), according to the HSE.
Most of them were waiting less than 12 weeks, and seven of them were waiting between 12 and 26 weeks.
This is relatively good compared to other Community Healthcare Organisations in other parts of the country – the West made up just 2% of the 2,384 children nationally who were waiting for CAMHS referrals.
But the HSE has conceded that the data is not up to date – and so the full extent of waiting list in the West is not known.
“As a result of the recent cyberattack on HSE systems, the latest set of full data for the number of children waiting to be seen by CAMHS is from March 2021,” said Jim Ryan, Assistant National Director of the National Mental Health Services.
Mr Ryan was responding to a Parliamentary Question submitted by Galway West TD, Noel Grealish (Ind) and supplied to the Galway City Tribune.
He said that CAMHS provides specialist mental health care to children aged up to 18, “who have met the threshold for a diagnosis of moderate to severe mental health disorder that requires the input of a multi-disciplinary mental health teams”.
(Photo: The CAMHS unit at Merlin Park)
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