Perceived impact of formulating, implementing and enacting national mental health policies recommendations in practice: An exploratory qualitative study within child and adolescent mental health services in Scotland.

Objective: To understand the process of formulating, implementing and enacting national recommendations into practice, by exploring the interactions between government policymakers and national and local organisations supporting and delivering policy implementation within a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) context in Scotland.

Methods: Data collection involved 16 semi-structured individual and four focus group interviews with a purposeful sample of policymakers, national health and social care stakeholders and local outpatient and inpatient CAMHS teams representing three NHS health boards in Scotland.

Results: Study participants highlighted the challenges of navigating through evolving and often conflicting policy agendas, seen to not acknowledging the current evidence base or experiential learning from services and prior evaluations.