The 7 Helpful Habits Assessment Scale

Complete the assessment tool, preferably with your team, and decide which items you do
well, which would you like to improve or implement.

Handle Demand	No	Sometimes	Often	Yes
1. Eligibility Criteria A defined set of criteria that state what conditions are eligible for the service
2. Diversion Criteria Agreements with other agencies to accept problems not eligible for CAMHS
3. 2 Levels of priority Referrals are either treated as routine or priority and have a published set of criteria that define
4. SLA Service Level Agreement for activity targets with commissioners or sub-groups of commissioners
5. Strategy An agreed and published a strategy for CAMHS developments and priorities over the next 2 – 5 years
6. Full Booking Giving families the opportunity to book a first appointment on receipt of referral
7. Screen referrals directly Make direct clinical assessments of referrals to determine appropriateness and priority
8. Flex capacity Vary your number of first appointments and intervention appointments in line with yearly variation in referrals

Extend Capacity	No	Sometimes	Often	Yes
9. Know Capacity Have calculated your team’s capacity in terms of assessments and treatments that can be provided
10. Follow-up focus Have a clear system in the team to focus on appropriate and relevant follow-up: “follow-up with a purpose”
11. Use meetings effectively Ensure the right people are at the right meetings and there is a clear focus for each meeting
12. Extend clinical roles Widen each clinician’s skill base e.g. non medics doing ADHD and overdose assessments
13. Activity standards Have a team and individual standards for the expected number of new assessments and follow-up appointments
14. Monitor activity Have an IT system that collects activity, reports it to clinical managers and is used in supervision and job planning
15. Demand & Capacity recruitment Recruit staff based on a demand and capacity analysis including process mapping and bottlenecks

Let go of Families	No	Sometimes	Often	Yes
16. Closing case variation A process that reviews the appropriateness and effectiveness of ongoing work e.g. annual or six-monthly review
17. Care plans Have clear care plans that include defined treatment goals (agreed with family) and not just a therapy type
18. Plans for long-term conditions For long-term conditions have a systematic and agreed multi-agency approach to their care e.g. ADHD

Process Mapping	No	Sometimes	Often	Yes
19. Process map Have mapped and understood the patient journey identifying bottlenecks, multiple handoffs etc
20. CAMHS communication Communicate with other CAMHS to find out what works
21. Process from the user viewpoint Regularly discuss in the team the process from the viewpoint of a user
22. Users in Process mapping Consult with, and get feedback from users on the process map of the service e.g. pin onto the waiting room wall

Flow Management	No	Sometimes	Often	Yes
23. Bottleneck analysis Identify bottlenecks and have a plan arising from demand and capacity analysis…
24. Screen referrals daily Reduce time in the patients’ journey by doing today’s work today
25. Reduce the number of queues Reduce the number of queues by having generic appointments that see and treat, initially, most clinical problems
26. Segmented Clinics Smoothing the clinical flow by having clinics that deliver the same service for similar needs (not by diagnosis)
27. Administration time Clinical work requires an amount of supporting administration time. Built it into job plans
28. No internal waits Ensure partial/full booking to all assessments and internal treatments. No waiting lists for specialist work
29. Something to do Give families something to do whilst waiting for the next step; books, handouts, community resources

Look after Staff	No	Sometimes	Often	Yes
33. Team away days Have days that are facilitative of staff, team building and service development. Off-site and informal
34. Value staff Consult and involve staff on service and policy changes, support training and figure the rest out!
35. Job plans and annual appraisal Have clear job plans for members of staff including activity and attendance
36. Encourage team relationships Facilitate positive personal relationships in the team e.g. have lunch together

The average score for 100 teams who were not doing CAPA was 42. As an example East Herts CAMHS has a score of 84.

Use Care Bundles	No	Sometimes	Often	Yes
30. Know Best practice Know current best practice guidelines
31. Local agreement of Care bundles
32. Implement and monitor Care Bundle usage