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CAMHS stands for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.
CAMHS teams assess and treat children and young people with emotional, behavioral, or mental health problems. If you have been referred to CAMHS, your referral may have been made by your local doctor (GP), school/college nurse, social worker or you may have referred yourself for support.
All referrals will be screened by a service called Triage and Navigation who decide which is the best service to help you. If you have been referred for an assessment for a condition such as Autism Spectrum Disorder or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, you will need to have provided additional information (such as a report from school) in order for the right decision to be made about which service is needed.
If your referral is directed to CAMHS, it will be sent to the team that is most suitable to meet your needs. This may depend on what you are struggling with or your personal circumstances. This decision will have been made based on the information in your referral so it is important that you have had an opportunity to say what you want to be included in this.
The team will let you know that they have received your referral and that they will be offering you an appointment. This initial appointment is sometimes called an “access appointment” or an “initial assessment appointment”.
There may be a wait until your initial appointment. How long the waiting time is can vary depending on the current demand for the service and how urgently you need to be seen. Depending on what you have been referred for, we may send out some questionnaires/forms to complete and either ask you bring these to your initial appointment or send back to us. This will help the process when we meet with you.
Whilst we try to see everyone as soon as possible, the impact of COVID and subsequent increase in demand for services may mean that you have a long wait. For this reason, we have created a self-help guide for whilst you are waiting.
