Northern Ireland Figures Show 651 CAMHS Assessment Waits Exceeded Nine Weeks

Hundreds of waits for specialist child and adolescent mental health assessments in Northern Ireland exceeded nine weeks at the end of June 2026, according to new Department of Health statistics.

The quarterly release, published on 8 October, recorded 1,731 waits for an initial assessment by Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, or CAMHS. Of these, 651, representing 38% of the total, had lasted longer than nine weeks.

What these figures cover

CAMHS services assess and treat children and young people with mental health needs. The published measure concerns waits for an initial assessment; it is not a count of every young person receiving mental health support or every subsequent treatment delay.

An important warning about comparisons

The department cautions that this is the first new CAMHS waiting-time release since May 2025, following the rollout of a new electronic patient-record system called Encompass. Information drawn from the replacement system represents a break in the statistical series, so simple comparisons with older releases may be misleading.

The questions for services

The figures raise questions about how promptly specialist assessments are available and what support families receive while waiting. However, the overall figures cannot explain differences in referral urgency, regional availability or clinical pathways without more detailed local information.

Further releases will be needed to assess the direction of the backlog under the new data system. Keep Updated UK will state the dataset limitations whenever these numbers are compared across periods.