The effectiveness of low-intensity mental health interventions for children and young people in England: a presentation and analysis of synthesised outcomes.

Background

Despite rapid national implementation of the new low-intensity (LI) children and young people's (CYP) mental health (MH) workforce, outcomes have not been synthesised at scale.

Methods

This paper presents retrospective, uncontrolled routine outcome data collected between July 2017 and May 2025 from LI services across several regions of England, supported by five Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Data were drawn from CYP aged 5-18 receiving LI interventions delivered by training and newly qualified practitioners. Paired outcome measures included goal-based outcomes (GBOs; n = 26,012), the Revised Children's Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS; n = 14,661), the Child Outcome Rating Scale (CORS; n = 3485), the Outcome Rating Scale (ORS; n = 8320) and the Brief Parental Self-Efficacy Scale (BPSES; n = 944).

Results

Significant improvement was observed across outcomes, with medium effect sizes on the RCADS, CORS and ORS, and large effect sizes on the GBOs and BPSES. Reliable improvement rates were 47% on the RCADS and 56% on the GBOs, with reliable deterioration rates of 6% and 1%, respectively. Outcomes were broadly comparable in magnitude to published datasets and meta-analytic benchmarks, despite the lower treatment dosage (2-8 sessions).

Conclusion

LI MH interventions delivered by this new workforce were associated with meaningful improvements in symptoms and goal attainment across diverse settings. These findings suggest that this workforce may represent a scalable approach to addressing the treatment gap in CYP MH services. Future work should incorporate demographic data and controlled designs.