Collaborative care with child and adolescent mental-health services — branching viva

Opening

Examiner: What do you understand by collaborative care between paediatrics and child and adolescent mental-health services? ^[1]

Candidate: Collaborative care is a structured, team-based, measurement-guided partnership between paediatric primary care and specialist CAMHS that shares accountability for a young person's mental health across a stepped continuum. It is not a referral and a handshake — the AACAP 2023 clinical update frames it as an embedded behavioural-health clinician, a consulting psychiatrist providing caseload oversight, a care manager, and a registry-tracked plan. The reason it exists is that paediatric primary care is the de facto front door for youth mental health, and most affected children are either unrecognised or lost between services. ^{[1] [2]}