CAMHS referrals climb as liaison teams stabilise handovers
Children and young people’s mental health demand in London increased through 2024–25, with more under-18s referred and in contact with NHS-funded services than a year earlier, while emergency department (ED) mental health liaison teams reported steady response times that helped shorten onward pathways from first assessment.
NHS mental health monthly statistics indicate that, between April 2024 and March 2025, London providers registered a higher count of new CAMHS referrals than in 2023–24 and recorded a year-on-year rise in the number of children and young people seen at least once, framing the access trend as upward rather than volatile over the twelve-month window.
Within the same period, ED-based mental health liaison teams across the capital maintained time-to-assessment performance within locally set thresholds for the majority of presentations, anchoring handovers to community or inpatient care and containing repeat attendances from the same cohort over short intervals.
The distribution of activity was uneven across integrated care boards, with inner-London systems reporting higher rates of first contacts per 1,000 under-18 population than several outer-London systems, a pattern consistent with broader inequalities measures but with absolute counts rising in most areas across the year.
Read together, the counts and rates describe an access-and-flow picture: more under-18 referrals entered CAMHS in 2024–25 than the year before, more young people received at least one contact, and ED liaison teams sustained core timing standards that limited avoidable delays at the hospital–community interface.
All figures and time windows are derived from NHS England’s Mental Health Services Monthly Statistics for children and young people (April 2024–March 2025 for annual comparisons; monthly cuts to September 2025 for trajectory) and local London performance returns covering ED mental health liaison response times over the same period.
