Valencia’s public health system is to create eight specialist units for children and teenagers with ADHD or autism whose cases involve particular clinical complexity, significant co-existing conditions or a poor response to usual treatment. There will be one in each interdepartmental health grouping. They will support teams already caring for these patients rather than becoming a new point of direct access.
The measure sits at the centre of the regional government’s 2026–2030 ADHD Action Plan, approved by the Health Department and published in the official gazette this week. The plan aims to address care that the department itself describes as geographically inconsistent, fragmented between services and particularly weak when a young patient reaches adulthood.
The potential reach is considerable. In 2025, the Valencian Health System treated 25,691 people with an ADHD diagnosis: 17,521 under-18s and 8,170 adults. The number of children and teenagers receiving care has risen by 54.2% since 2015, while the adult total has grown more than sixfold. These are service figures — people known to the health system — rather than an estimate of every case in the population.
A referral resource, not eight walk-in centres
The new Neurodevelopment Units will operate above individual health-department level. Primary care or child and adolescent mental-health services will refer the most complex cases for specialist assessment and multidisciplinary intervention. Patients may return to a local service for follow-up when their clinical situation allows. The aim is to stop highly complex cases being handled differently simply because they live in another part of the region.
Approval of the plan does not mean that all eight units are already open. Organisational design and rollout are priorities for the first twelve months, but the document does not yet name their locations, staffing or individual opening dates. Nor does it attach a separate budget to each measure. Work in 2026 and 2027 will be funded from the existing Valencian Mental Health and Addictions Plan; provision for 2028 to 2030 must be incorporated into its successor.
That distinction matters to families. The resolution in the official gazette brings the framework into force, but referral routes, clinical protocols and staffing decisions still require further administrative action. For now, local health centres and mental-health services remain the ordinary points of care.
Adult ADHD receives its first dedicated pathway
The other structural change is a specific care model for adults with ADHD. It must divide responsibilities between primary care and mental-health services, set common assessment and referral criteria and enable shared follow-up for stable patients. It will also cover people whose condition was not diagnosed in childhood.
A common transition procedure is planned for patients moving from child and adolescent services into adult care. Anyone who needs continued treatment after turning 18 should receive a continuity plan and a named reference service. Loss of follow-up during this handover is among the shortcomings identified in the Health Department’s own assessment.
The plan’s 29 measures also include shared protocols, evidence-based pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions, professional training and coordination with education authorities. Detection work will place greater emphasis on groups at higher risk of being missed, particularly girls, women and adults.
Progress is meant to be measurable before the programme ends. The Directorate-General for Mental Health and Addictions must review implementation annually, conduct an interim evaluation in 2028 and a final one in 2030. Until locations, teams and referral routes are defined, the change remains an organisational commitment rather than an additional service families can use. Its rollout will determine whether the network genuinely narrows the geographical disparities identified by the plan itself.