In Ontario, children and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) are unable to keep up with the demand. The result is wait lists for these services. In an effort to get help, some families may contact more than one service provider. This can lead to lost time and emotional stress for families, and duplication of services and other inefficiencies for the CAMHS system. To better understand this wait-list effect, researchers measured the impact of wait times for CAMHS on families’ efforts to seek help from more than one service provider. The researchers tried to answer two broad questions:
- Does time on a wait list affect the time it takes for families to contact a new service provider for CAMHS?
- What effect do particular influencing factors have on the length of time parents wait before contacting a new agency?
To find out more about this research, you can read our Research Snapshot on the EENet website. Research Snapshots are brief, clear language summaries of research, presented in a user-friendly format.