Transition at Emerge: evaluating transition practice and elucidating ethnic differences

Abstract

Background Transition between child and adult services is a notoriously difficult area of mental health provision. This service evaluation was designed to determine the standard of transition practice, as well as analysing any differences in transition between ethnicities at Emerge, a service for 16–17 year olds in Manchester Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS).

Methods This study utilised 68 randomly selected sets of case notes of
cases closed to Emerge. The data was collected manually from these case notes using a data-collection tool and analysed using Microsoft Excel.

Results Of the seven cases in the sample that transitioned to adult services, none experienced an optimal transition as defined by the TRACK study.(1) Only seven of the total cases were from a black and minority ethnic (BME) background, so elucidating any ethnic differences in transition was not possible.

Conclusion The results showed that transition practice at Emerge did not meet the standard of practice, prompting a recommendation for better liaison between CAMHS and Adult Mental Health Services (AMHS). Access to Emerge for ethnic minorities was shown to be limited, although the study failed to reveal ethic differences in transition owing to its small sample size.