The Development and Piloting of 'Power Up': a Tool for Young People with Internalising/emotional Disorders to Make Shared Decisions in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS)

Patients should be able to have a say in their care and treatment, but how this should work for children and young people with mental health difficulties is unknown. For example, how and when do young people want to be involved in decision making, and what is important to them, their parents/guardians and healthcare professionals? This project will address these questions and will develop a tool known as 'Power Up' to help young people with mental health difficulties make decisions about their own care and treatment. This project will run for 24 months and will: 1. Understand the beliefs, experiences, and values of young people, their parents/guardians and clinicians around shared decision making (SDM) in mental health. 2. Use these responses to develop 'Power Up'; a tool to help young people make decisions about their care or treatment in mental health services. 3. Pilot 'Power 'Up' in child and adolescent mental health services to estimate the number of patients who would want to use Power Up and to see whether patients can be recruited and followed up with measures. The pilot study would investigate randomisation, see how clinicians cooperate, and identify barriers to collaboration and ways of overcoming these. Forty five young people, parents and clinicians will be recruited for interviews and focus groups to inform tool development. Sixty young people aged 1116 will be recruited for the pilot/feasibility study. Measurements will be collected at baseline, session by session, and at the end of treatment.