A centralized intake platform introduced in one of France’s largest metropolitan areas was followed by a sustained rise in the annual outpatient active caseload of its child and adolescent mental health services, according to a descriptive study published in the journal Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health. The authors report that in 2022, the first full calendar year after the platform’s implementation, the caseload at the platform’s hospital climbed above the weighted median across ten comparator centers, and that its trajectory continued upward, exceeding the third quartile of the distribution in 2023 and remaining above that threshold in 2024.
The platform, known as POP, is a multidisciplinary service that provides first-line assessment, clinical guidance and coordinated referrals for children and adolescents referred to public mental health services. Its stated aims are to prioritize urgent cases, streamline access to care, enhance timeliness and optimize the use of public resources. It was introduced in a context in which child and adolescent psychiatry has faced persistent challenges in meeting demand, and in which many health systems sought to reorganize the management of increasing first referrals following the COVID-19 pandemic.
The study had two components. The first was the iterative development of a logic model for POP, built from project documents and refined by professionals to ensure fidelity and contextual relevance. The second was a descriptive analysis of trends in annual active caseload in the child and adolescent mental health services of the POP hospital, comparing the period before and after implementation.
Active caseload was defined as the number of patients with at least one recorded outpatient mental health contact during the calendar year. The data were extracted from the French national clinical information system. To place the local trend in context, the researchers presented it graphically alongside the trends observed in the child and adolescent mental health services of the nine other French hospital centers with the largest active caseloads over the period 2016 to 2024.
The comparison window captured a major disruption. All participating centers showed a decline in 2020 associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by a post-pandemic recovery in 2021. Against that shared baseline, the divergence emerged after the platform went live. In 2022 the POP hospital’s annual outpatient active caseload increased further and rose above the weighted median across the ten study centers, while the median trend across centers remained broadly stable. The hospital’s trajectory then continued to increase through 2023 and 2024.
The authors are careful about what these numbers can and cannot show. In their conclusion they state that POP implementation was followed by a sustained increase in recorded annual outpatient active caseload relative to selected high-volume comparator centers, but they emphasize that these descriptive findings do not establish causality. The analysis instead supports further evaluation of the model’s implementation and effectiveness.
That caution matters for interpretation. The study is observational and descriptive in design, examining trends rather than testing the platform in a controlled comparison. The comparator group consisted of the nine French hospital centers with the largest active caseloads over the study period, a selected set of high-volume services rather than a randomized or matched control group. An increase in recorded caseload could reflect several processes, including genuine changes in service delivery, changes in recording or assessment practices, or shifts in demand, and the published analysis does not distinguish among them.
Within those limits, the findings offer a preliminary picture of how one demand-management model functioned after rollout. The logic model component documents how the platform was designed to sit at the front line of referrals, assessing new cases, guiding clinicians and coordinating onward referrals while flagging urgent situations for priority. The caseload analysis then tracks one observable consequence of that reorganization: the number of patients with at least one recorded outpatient contact each year at the implementing hospital, relative to a set of comparable high-volume services nationwide.
The study arrives amid broader attention to access to child and adolescent mental health care. The journal page lists related recent work on clinician experiences on child psychiatry wards during the COVID-19 pandemic, on user participation and shared decision-making in adolescent mental healthcare, and on disparities among mental health patients at risk of exhibiting aggression. For services weighing similar centralized intake models, the French results suggest that such a platform can be followed by a marked and sustained rise in recorded activity, while leaving open the questions of cause and of clinical outcomes that further evaluation is expected to address.
Subject of Research: Trends in active caseloads in child and adolescent public mental health services following the implementation of a centralized demand-management platform in France
Article Title: Increase in active caseload following the implementation of a centralized demand-management platform in child and adolescent public mental health services in a French metropolitan area
Article References: Gonnon, L., Willermoz, L., Lucas-Pelisson, E., Marthinet, H., Delorme, R., Haesebaert, J., & Geoffray, M. M. (2026). Increase in active caseload following the implementation of a centralized demand-management platform in child and adolescent public mental health services in a French metropolitan area. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13034-026-01173-7
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: 10.1186/s13034-026-01173-7
Keywords: child and adolescent mental health, centralized intake platform, demand management, active caseload, France, CAMHS, COVID-19 pandemic, health services research, descriptive study, access to care, public mental health services, Increase
News Source: Glenn Wilkins. (October 29, 2026). Centralized intake platform tied to rising caseloads in French child mental health. Scienmag.
