Original studyBMJ Mental Health, 2026Read the paper →
Parents seeking help for a child’s anxiety, behaviour, or development often face long waits and confusing referral routes. Child and adolescent mental health services in many countries are struggling with demand, made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic. A new French study suggests that a single phone line for first requests can make sorting cases clearer, but it does not shorten waits on its own.
Researchers at Claude Bernard University Lyon 1, Centre Hospitalier Le Vinatier, and partner institutions in France evaluated the platform, known as POP, which was launched in 2021 in a large French metropolitan area. The findings appear in BMJ Mental Health. The team analysed records of 7,578 first requests made between February 2022 and December 2024 and interviewed 44 professionals.
Before the platform, five local public services covered about 182,000 children and teenagers. In 2019, waiting lists in some areas reached up to two years, and some services stopped taking new patients altogether. Each service largely managed its own referrals.
The platform works through one free phone number during office hours. Trained nurses and social workers, supervised by a child and adolescent psychiatrist, ask about the child’s situation, needs, and urgency. Children can then be sent to emergency care, a rapid consultation with a psychiatrist, their local service, specialist services, or community partners such as GPs.
Triage means sorting requests by urgency and need, so that the most pressing cases are dealt with first. Most requests concerned boys (60%), and children aged 6–12 were the largest group at 45%. Half of the children lived in disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods, and family members made 82% of the requests where the caller was known.
Of 4,890 children whose pathway could be followed from February 2022 to December 2023, 38.2% were redirected outside specialist mental health services, and 61.8% were referred on to them. Urgent cases spent less time on the platform and waited less for specialist care. The most common diagnoses among those referred were behavioural and emotional disorders, developmental disorders, and anxiety, dissociative, stress-related or somatoform disorders.
Waiting times were the weak point. The mean gap between first contact with the platform and a first specialist consultation, among children referred to those services in 2022 and 2023, was 103 days, and it rose from 92 days in 2022 to 113 days in 2023. Children from disadvantaged areas, those aged 6–12 compared with younger children, and those later diagnosed with developmental disorders all waited longer.
Staff said the single number made access clearer and that supportive listening reassured families. Some felt phone assessment had limits for complex cases, and that families facing language or digital barriers could struggle. Staff views of the platform became more positive over time.
The study has clear limits. There was no comparison site and no data from before the platform began, so it cannot show what effect the platform had on waits, especially amid post-pandemic pressures. Families and young people were not interviewed, and follow-up was weaker for children sent to outside partners.
Single points of access are already used in child mental health services elsewhere, and earlier research suggests they can improve access and coordination, though that evidence is largely observational. The authors conclude that such platforms help sort demand but cannot cut waits without more specialist capacity, regular checks on fairness of access, and extra support for disadvantaged families.
Phone line helps sort child mental health cases. Waits still grew, a French study finds.
