When you attend an appointment at the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, you may meet a range of professionals, all of whom are specialists in what they do. Our team includes:
CAMHS Practitioner
CAMHS workers come from a variety of backgrounds including nursing, social work and youth work. Their aim is to work with other children’s services, offering early help and intervention to improve emotional wellbeing. Our locality workers often work in clinics, schools and homes to support people through brief interventions of up to six sessions. They also provide training, consultation, advice and formulation planning to other professionals who work with and support children and young people.
Mental Health Nurses
Our Mental Health Nurses are specially trained nurses who work with children and young people who are experiencing emotional wellbeing and mental health difficulties. They are experienced in working with individuals and with parents, carers and families throughout their CAMHS journey.
Psychologists
Our psychologists aim to use their knowledge of how children develop to help children and young people understand the way they behave, feel and think about things. They are trained in different types of therapies which help children, young people and their families explore and understand their emotional difficulties. They consider what factors, both past and present there may be that are contributing to current problems and support with strategies for how to work towards agreed goals. Psychologists will also complete assessments which look at memory, concentration, attention and other thinking skills.
Family Therapists
Family therapists work with the whole family or different combinations of family members, with the aim to maximise on a family’s strengths to support a family member overcome the problems they are experiencing. They support families to express and explore difficult thoughts and emotions safely. They help families to understand each other’s experiences and views, appreciate each other’s needs, build on strengths and make useful changes in their relationships and lives. A key objective is to support you to identify how your family functions and develop more helpful ways of interacting and supporting each other.
Psychiatrists
Child and adolescent psychiatrists can help your child with a wide variety of mental health issues and will be able to diagnose conditions, as well as advise on treatment plans and prescribe appropriate medications. A psychiatrist is a medically trained professional who has completed their medical training, followed by specialist higher training in psychiatry.
Art Therapists
Our art therapists use art materials to support children and young people to think, express and talk about their thoughts, feelings, inner conflicts and difficulties they are experiencing. They usually work with individuals but may occasionally work with families or groups of children or young people and you don’t have to be good at art to use this type of therapy.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapists
CBT is a talking therapy which can work very effectively for children and young people to help them overcome conditions such as anxiety, depression, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and anger management. Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorder can also benefit from our Cognitive Behavioural Therapist as it helps to manage some of their symptoms in a more positive, healthy way. Our Cognitive Behavioural Therapists aim to challenge patterns of behaviour and thought processes that are negative, destructive or distressing and replace them with more positive thought patterns.
Psychotherapists
Child and adolescent psychotherapists are trained to carefully observe children and young people and respond to what they might be communicating through their behaviour and play for support with a range of emotional or behavioural difficulties. They will tailor their approach to the individual child or young person and work in an age-appropriate way, for example using play or drawing with younger children, but talking about feelings with teenagers. Child and adolescent psychotherapists use a multidisciplinary approach and work within the context of the child’s life, for example, the family or school. They may see a child individually, in a group with other children, or with parents or other family members. They may also see parents or carers without the child being present.
Peer Support Workers
Our CAMHS Peer Support Workers are people who have lived experience, either personally or as a carer, of mental health challenges and who use these experiences to help others on their recovery journey. One of their key objectives is to support young people who will be moving on from CAMHS into adult mental health services.
Children’s Wellbeing Practitioners
Our children and young people’s Patient Wellbeing Practitioners deliver high-quality; brief outcome focused evidence-based interventions for children and young people experiencing mild to moderate mental health difficulties.
Trainees
One of the jobs of our teams is to support and train people who are learning one of the professions within our service. We often have trainees working in all different professions who will be involved in the care of children, young people and their families who are accessing our services.