In this section...

  1. Adult Community Services
  2. Children's services
  3. Carers corner
  4. Community mental health services
  5. Community response to COVID-19
  6. Expert Patient Programme
  7. Dementia and older people’s mental health
  8. Health for Homeless Service
  9. Medication
  10. Learning disability services
  11. Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS)
  12. Personalised care planning
  13. SilverCloud
  14. Spiritual and pastoral care
  15. Suicide Liaison Service
  16. Talking Therapies
  17. Transforming wound care
  18. Tuberculosis Service
  19. Useful information following a bereavement
  20. Video appointments
  21. Virtual wards
  22. Wheelchair Service
  23. Worried about someone's mental health?

How to contact us

We do not operate a general enquiries phone line or email address due to being a small service.

For children, young people and families open to the service, or professionals, email the CAMHS ADHD Duty Team.

The service operates out of the CAMHS bases located across the county:

  • West Cornwall: Penwith (based in Penzance) and Kerrier (based in Pool).
  • Mid Cornwall: Carrick (based in Truro) and Restormel (based in St Austell).
  • East Cornwall Caradon (based in Liskeard) and north east (based in Launceston).

CAMHS ADHD Service

We are a post-diagnostic prescribing service only. This means we can only provide a service to children and young people once they have a confirmed and approved diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and require medication treatment.

If a child or young person is not suitable for medication or they and their families do not wish for medication treatment, then we are unable to hold them open to the service. We are looking to develop our service to provide psychological treatment however this is not currently available.

The service works with children and young people aged 5 to 18 years old. Our service is divided into the 3 areas: west, mid and east.

We are a small multi-disciplinary team of specialist nursing non-medical prescribers, advanced practitioner, nurse and administrative staff. We work closely with CAMHS services and children neurodevelopmental assessment services.

We receive referrals from the CAMHS and Neurodevelopmental Assessment Team once an assessment for ADHD has been completed and is diagnosed or from those referring into who have received a diagnosis from an alternative organisation or provider.

Suspected neurodiversity

To access the most personalised and timely support for a child or young person with suspected neurodiversity, someone who knows them well needs to complete the neurodiversity profiling tool with them and their family first.

The profiling tool can help to pinpoint specific areas of impact and identify ways to support them with neurodiverse needs and differences straight away. The actions identified from the profiling need to be completed, and strategies and reasonable adjustments trialled for a sustained period of over 12 weeks.

If you are still struggling with how to support a young person after this, we would invite you to speak to our multi-disciplinary consultation team to access support.

Due to a change in neurodevelopmental pathways in Cornwall in 2024, our service is supporting the old pathway assessment process for a specific cohort children and young people. This is to help move those children and young people through the previous pathway and is not an ongoing part of our service offer.

For more information, visit the Parent Carers Cornwall website. For support, email our Neurodiversity Team.

Resources

Private assessments and diagnoses

Our service will consider children and young people who have had a private assessment of ADHD and have been diagnosed.

We require any requests to the service to be accompanied by the full diagnostic report. Our service will then add the child and young person to a waiting list for our multi-disciplinary team to review the quality of the assessment. This is to ensure that the assessment meets the full diagnostic criteria and quality we would expect to provide a treatment option.

We can decline private diagnoses if they do not meet the required standards

Co-morbid ADHD and mental health

We are an ADHD prescribing service only and are unable to provide mental health intervention or risk support if a child or young person has this alongside ADHD.

We ask that the correct services that support mental health are engaged with and referred to in these circumstances.

These may include:

If you feel that your child's mental health needs require higher level support then you can self-refer or seek guidance or support by referring them to CAMHS. On that page, scroll down to CAMHS Access Team tab and read the referrals section for more information.

Waiting times

Due to a change in neurodevelopmental pathways in Cornwall in 2024, our service is supporting the old pathway assessment process for a specific cohort children and young people. This is to help move those children and young people through the previous pathway and is not an ongoing part of our service offer. We cannot provide a timeframe for when we can continue the assessment process for these individuals.

Due to significant demand for our service over recent years, combined with year long medication shortages in ADHD medications, internationally, we are unable to provide waiting times for medication treatment to start due to the additional waiting times these challenges have created.

Information for professionals

If you are working with a child or young person and wish to seek advice or share risk or concern information, please contact or team via email. Contact details are at the top of this page.

Information for parents and carers

Due to demand for our services, we encourage you to inform of us of any appointments you may need to cancel or rearrange as we follow a was not brought policy. This policy means we have a limit of missed appointments we can accept before considering discharge from the service. This is to ensure all people waiting are safeguarded. It also allows other people waiting for support to access help in a timelier way.

We cannot provide information to the education sector to support non-attendance to school or college. We can only share information on the needs of a child or young person and how this may impact them when at their educational placement. Support around education attendance or additional special or educational needs will need to be discussed with the school or college themselves. This can be done through the school or college's special education needs lead.

Whilst you wait for our service, visit the Parents Carers Cornwall website. On this website there is a 'emotional regulation' tab which hosts as wealth of information about what this means and a range of resources for parents to look and read through. There are strategies to help reduce emotional responses that you may find useful.

There are also other tabs on this website that are useful for helping children with a range of other needs, including:

  • sensory processing
  • sleep
  • friendships
  • school support
  • managing symptoms of ADHD

Virtual tours of CAMHS bases across Cornwall

Bolitho House, Penwith CAMHS

The Hive, Kerrier CAMHS

Shaw House, Restormel CAMHS

Truro Health Park, Carrick CAMHS

Launceston, north CAMHS

Heathlands, Caradon CAMHS

Service feedback

The NHS Friends and Family Test is an important feedback tool that supports the fundamental principle that people who use NHS services should have the opportunity to provide feedback on their experience. Share your experience.

If you would like to help us celebrate good practice in our service, you can also submit a WOW Award nomination for a member of staff or team. We would value any positive feedback you would be happy to share.

If you feel dissatisfied with the service we are providing, you are welcome to submit a complaint via our Patient Advice and Liaison Service.