By stewartb

The Scottish Parliament Information Service (SPICe) has compiled time series data on the performance of NHS Scotland against the following target: ’90% of young people should begin treatment for specialist Child and Adolescent Mental Health services within 18 weeks of referral.’

See https://spice-spotlight.scot/health-performance/

In graphs with data back to Quarter 1, 2025, SPICe shows that the poorest performance for Scotland overall was in Q2 2020 when just 61.7% of referrals began treatment within 18 weeks. Since then there has been steady improvement: in line with the main blog post, during Q4 2025 (the latest period charted by SPICe), the Scotland figure is 90%.

However, even this 90% compliance figure underplays what has been achieved by health boards. Below are the board level performance figures for Q4 2025: Lothian is an outlier and of course, will impact negatively on the overall Scotland figure.

Ayrshire & Arran = 100% started treatment within 18 weeks

Forth Valley = 100%

Greater Glasgow & Clyde = 100%

Orkney = 100% Shetland = 100%

Western Isles = 100%

Borders = 98.3%

FIfe = 97.9%

Grampian = 97.4%

Tayside = 97.1%

Lanarkshire = 96.3%

Highland = 88.4%

Dumfries & Galloway = 81.4%

Lothian = 62.9%.