{"id":304295,"date":"2026-02-27T04:22:25","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T04:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/304295\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T04:22:25","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T04:22:25","slug":"minister-of-state-says-meeting-with-families-affected-by-north-kerry-camhs-care-was-harrowing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/304295\/","title":{"rendered":"Minister of State says meeting with families affected by North Kerry CAMHS care was harrowing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Minister of State for Mental Health says meeting with the families of children affected by the care provided to them at North Kerry CAMHS was harrowing.<\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.radiokerry.ie\/news\/north-kerry-camhs-report-finds-56-of-children-put-at-risk-of-potential-harm-from-treatment-472417\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">report<\/a> found that 56% of children in the care of North Kerry <a href=\"https:\/\/www2.hse.ie\/mental-health\/services-support\/camhs\/introduction\/?gclsrc=aw.ds&amp;gad_source=1&amp;gad_campaignid=1651601406&amp;gclid=EAIaIQobChMIqf7kzovokgMVnZlQBh2vYy7BEAAYASAAEgK1HfD_BwE\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services<\/a> were at risk of potential harm from their treatment.<\/p>\n<p>Junior Minister Mary Butler met with families in Tralee yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>She says she is devastated for the children and their families, saying as a mother whose own child was in the care of CAMHS previously, she felt what they were saying very deeply:<\/p>\n<p>Junior Minister Butler also confirmed that the HSE has made a referral to the Medical Council in relation to a clinician following the findings at North Kerry CAMHS.<\/p>\n<p>She believes without accountability people won\u2019t be able to move on from what happened and she wants a swift investigation:<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Minister of State Butler confirmed that contracts have been signed for a senior psychiatrist for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.radiokerry.ie\/news\/report-finds-significant-harm-caused-to-46-young-mental-health-patients-267122\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">South Kerry CAMHS<\/a>; that post had been vacant for 12 years.<\/p>\n<p>She also confirmed that funding has been allocated for two suicide crisis assessment nurses (SCAN) in Kerry.<\/p>\n<p>These nurses aim to provide a timely response to requests from GPs for assessment of patients in suicidal crisis.<\/p>\n<p>In recent weeks, there had been calls for these nurses to be located in Kerry as a matter of urgency:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Minister of State for Mental Health says meeting with the families of children affected by the care&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[166613,134,554,555,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-304295","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-camhs","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-mental-health","11":"tag-mentalhealth","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}