Background & Objectives

Improving transition experiences for young people from Children’s and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) to Adult Mental Health Services (AMHS) has been the focus of a variety of healthcare policy and service improvement initiatives across Europe, often as a result of mental health professionals, or parents and carer groups, raising concerns. 

Transition is, however, still a relatively little researched process and there are no generally accepted scientific standards regarding the process of transition and also the training and expertise mental health professionals need to achieve optimum transitions for young people Please click here to find out more about what research there is about young people and mental health transitions and why we need studies like MILESTONE.

The MILESTONE study started in February 2014 and was completed in 2019. The research team, drawn from eight European countries, worked across multiple sites, and systematically collected data from young people, parents and carers, as well as the mental health professionals working with them. 

MILESTONE’s aim was to learn from different countries how they currently support young people who need to move to AMHS throughout the process of transition, what works well or not and to identify where the gaps in healthcare systems in Europe lie. 

A key part of the study was to robustly evaluate an innovative transitional care intervention and develop a sustainable and standardised best-practice-model, with guidelines on transition.

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