The Mental Health Commission has said the increase in admissions of children and adolescents to adult units so far this year is totally unacceptable.
The Mental Health Commission's annual report for last year records 68 such admissions; a statistic which it says "shows a stark failure to abide by established policy".
But in the first five months of this year there were 44 child admissions to adult units, compared to 36 for the same period in 2016.
Launching the Report, the commission's Chairman John Saunders said the increase so far this year shows that, on this issue, we are going backwards.
The report lists possible reasons for the latest trend:
- A fall in the number of beds for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, and this decline is due to a shortage of personnel to staff them;
- Geography; clinical decisions; and family preference.
- A decline in capacity: at the end of last May there were 77 operational beds for the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, a decline of 16 on the same time last year.
Mr Saunders said this was due to decisions by the HSE to close beds in units like its facility in Cherry Orchard in west Dublin because of staff shortages.
"This issue needs to be addressed urgently by the Government and the HSE", he said, noting that a failure to attract and retain professional staff, including nurses, was a significant factor contributing to the difficulties.
The report also criticises what it calls "the lack of fundamentals" in the wider service, such as individual care plans, privacy of patients' personal space in wards and an absence of therapeutic activities in continuing care settings.
The report welcomes last year's Government allocation of €35m for spending on additional mental health services, with an emphasis on supporting the development of specialist community mental health teams.
However, Mr Saunders says that progress in this regard is still very slow.
The commission says the current level of spending on mental health is still falling short of the target of 8.24% of overall health spending, as laid out in the official plan for the sector, "A Vision for Change".
