“What’s concerning me now is youth mental health is becoming synonymous with Camhs and Camhs with youth mental health,” he said, referring to the HSE’s Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services. Joseph Duffy is proud of the help Jigsaw offers thousands of young people, and would like to see this need more widely recognised. Jigsaw CEO Joseph Duffy: ‘The feedback from teachers was they were trained in college to teach a particular subject but now they need to teach the whole person.’ Picture: Moya Nolan 'It's important to see that Camhs is just one part of youth mental health'įunding for youth mental health services needs to address everyone’s needs, and not only the children with the most severe needs, the CEO of the youth service Jigsaw has said. We can start off on the same salary and base it on the HSE pay scales, but we haven’t got the money in terms of standard pay increments.” “At the moment if a staff member comes to work with us in Jigsaw, we can’t pay the same as they would get in the HSE in terms of pension.

“This is being looked at and it is a real challenge,” he said. Mr Duffy said this is often linked to Jigsaw’s status as a Section 39 organisation, part-funded by the HSE and public or corporate donations. In addition to a spike in demand, gaps in the staffing roster at some centres is also contributing to the waiting times. Young people are screened to assess who can wait or who needs immediate support, with potential for referral to acute services if necessary. “But we know that the sooner we see them, the better the outcome is.” That’s a forecast, and if we have any cancellations or there’s a change, we can usually bring that forward,” he said. “Young people are not put on a waiting list, they are given a time and that time might in two weeks, three weeks or three months. Mr Duffy said demand is growing in larger towns and cities in particular. Up to July the wait time across the Munster centres was 18 weeks in Cork city, 13 weeks in Limerick city, seven weeks in Thurles, Tipperary and five weeks in Tralee, Co Kerry.ĭemand at each centre was high last year, with Cork recording 2,746 sessions attended, 2,044 in Tralee, 1,864 in Limerick and 1,617 in Thurles.

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