Children’s mental health – rethinking care
This year’s Sympany Foundation Day explored new approaches to caring for children and young people with mental health issues. The event was held in collaboration with Kinderspitex Nordwestschweiz, which plays a pioneering role in this area.
Basel, 25 June 2026 – The need for psychiatric care of children and adolescents has increased significantly in recent years. However, there is a shortage of therapy facilities to meet this development. Kinderspitex Nordwestschweiz makes an important contribution here. By working with the children and young people at home, it supports the whole family, because the entire family system is always affected when mental illnesses occur.
In light of this, experts presented new approaches in child and adolescent psychiatric care on the Foundation Day last week and exchanged views on the topic with around 70 guests from politics, service providers and other healthcare organisations.
Dr med. Matthias Luther, Senior Consultant and Deputy Director of the Clinic for Children and Adolescents of the University Psychiatric Clinics Basel (UPKKJ), explained the concept of outreach psychiatric treatment and the innovative Basel Liaison Model, in which specialists work very closely with residential and educational institutions. The model covers the overall living conditions of the patients and thus proves to be very successful in practice, as confirmed by Birgit Sutter, one of the nursing staff at Kinderspitex Nordwestschweiz. Using case studies, she showed how Kinderspitex fills a gap in healthcare for children and adolescents with mental health issues.
Cantonal Councillor Dr Lukas Engelberger, Head of the Department of Health of Basel-Stadt, and Nicole Kunz, affected parent and mentor for mothers, joined the subsequent panel discussion and discussed challenges, opportunities and possible solutions in child and adolescent psychiatric care.
Sympany Foundation and Kinderspitex Northwestern Switzerland act in concert
Kinderspitex Nordwestschweiz is a non-profit association with a public service mandate in the municipalities and cantons of Basel-Landschaft, Aargau and Solothurn. Qualified employees provide needs-based care for sick children and young people in their home environment. Psychiatric care is an important part of this work, but it is little known to the public.
The Sympany Foundation supports the “Paediatric psychiatric care” project run by Kinderspitex Nordwestschweiz. With its contribution, it finances psychiatric services for children and young people. Kinderspitex is the only organisation in the region to offer these services and they are not covered elsewhere.