CATCh-uS Surveillance study

The surveillance study runs in collaboration with Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Surveillance System (CAPSS) and British Paediatric Surveillance Unit (BPSU). Each month these units will mail a tick box response card to all consultant paediatricians and child psychiatrists in the UK and ROI. Consultants will report whether, within the last month, they have seen a young person who needs ongoing medication for ADHD and is within six months of the age boundary for their service.

Reporting clinicians will be sent a baseline questionnaire to confirm the eligibility of the case, collect details about current treatment and comorbidity and collect minimal identifier details to allow linkage to follow up reports. Additionally, we will ask for contact details of the adult service to whom they referred, ask them to evaluate the different aspects of an optimal transition, and whether they are willing to be interviewed further.

After nine months, a follow-up questionnaire will be sent to each reporting clinician, for each reported case, to establish if the young person was successfully referred to adult services.

News update:

November 2018

The surveillance study is complete, with data collection finalised in November 2017. A cross check data validation of CAPSS data with Clinical Record Interactive Search (CRIS) at the South London and Maudsley (SLaM) hospital trust has been carried out. Full details of the methods and results of this study will be available in the final NIHR report. Two research papers are also planned.

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