Well welcome to the first post on Inside CAMHS. There is a little bit about the blog in the about section but I wanted to explain a little further.
I am a social worker about to start in my first CAMHS role. I have experience in children and families and mental health social work so I feel very lucky to be starting in this role. However, to prepare for the interview I was researching around for information about the role that CAMHS play in helping young people and their families deal with mental health issues. What I was surprised by was just how little information there was.
This seemed to mirror my experience within children social care. Myself and other social workers always found it hard to know exactly what the CAMHS team did. There is also very little information about how people can access the service. I am sure I have not been the only social worker who has had a young person in crisis but have struggled to find the right support let alone even get a referral accepted for CAMHS support.
That’s when the idea came for this blog. I will be a space that hopefully will join up the gaps between professional knowledge, expectations and assumptions about CAMHS. There will be a variety of discussions around referrals, levels of service, good practice examples, potentially stories from young people themselves and practice/policy questions being answered.
I want this to be an inclusive blog that fills in the gaps that I know exist in practice in all areas of health and social care for young people. However, I want to make clear that this is not the space for therapeutic discussions for “live” cases. While I will try to explain possibly why decisions may have been made, it is important that if you are a parent, carer or young person accessing CAMHS then you should speak to your lead professional. The reason for this is that therapy is a long individual process that involves building a relationship two main people (sometime more in family therapy/group work) one of which will be the therapist. If i were to give advice it may undermine the therapeutic relationship and ultimately the therapy itself, and I would not want this to happen.
There are numbers for support listed in the useful contact details section. If you need urgent help check out this page and do not hesitate to contact someone. You can find the page by clicking here
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