CAMHS Primary Mental Health Team

Should your child or young person's mental health or risk worsen whilst waiting for a new patient assessment, contact the team.

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 children and young people waiting are safeguarded and allows other children and young people waiting for support to access help in a timelier way.

CAMHS are not a crisis service. Professionals can provide a maximum number of appointments at any given time due to supporting many children and young people. This means that if your child or young person is open to the team and requires more intensive support, a support request can be made to our Multi-Agency Rapid Response Service for enhanced risk support if deemed clinically appropriate.

CAMHS 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.

The team covers 3 localities.

• East Cornwall: bases at Launceston, Liskeard and Bodmin
• Mid Cornwall: bases at St Austell and Truro.
• West Cornwall: bases at Redruth and Penzance.

The teams work closely with schools, social care, charities, voluntary and community groups and deliver evidence-based interventions based on clinical care pathways.

Our care pathways are based on specific mental health needs including mood, anxiety, and ADHD. The pathways support the movement of children and young people through their care. It is used alongside what we call outcome measures, which are used to review a child or young person’s progress in interventions.

Children and young people may have multiple options for the type of interventions they can receive depending on need and goals they wish to set.

We offer intervention which is tailored to the holistic needs of the child or young person. This is largely an offer of 6 to 8 sessions but is reviewed mid-point to ensure the support is effective and the child and young person can engage.

Referrals are received by the Access Team. The team will triage the referral information to ensure referrals are signposted to the correct CAMHS or an alternative service.

If the referral is appropriate for assessment with the Primary Mental Health Team, the child or young person will receive an acceptance letter from the Access Team to confirm this. Following the acceptance, the child or young person will be placed on a waiting list for assessment with the relevant locality team, which is decided based on GP practice.

The teams aim to provide new patient assessments within 28 days of the referral being received by the service. During times of high demand, this is likely to take longer. In the case it takes longer, we encourage the individual, parent or carer, or professionals, to contact the service to share any worsening changes in mental health need or risk. The team contact information is located on the acceptance letter and above.

The new patient assessment is provided by practitioners from the Primary Mental Health Team. It can take up to 90 minutes to complete the assessment. We assess the child or young person to develop an understanding of their level of need and presenting mental health. The assessment develops a formulation for the individual and determines whether the Primary Mental Health Team is the right level of service for them.

If it is felt that the Primary Mental Health Team is not the most appropriate service, the assessment provides alternative recommendations for that individual. A copy of this outcome letter is sent to the individual, parent or carer and GP.

If you are working with a child or young person and wish to seek advice or share information, contact the Primary Mental Health Team and talk to our admin colleagues. This can be done via email or telephone.

You can also request to speak to a senior clinician if you wish to discuss worsening clinical or risk concerns.

We understand that coming to meet unfamiliar people and sharing personal information in CAMHS can be an overwhelming or worrying experience. Your first experience of meeting our team will be at your new patient assessment. This assessment will take up 90 minutes and hopes to explore a range of topics so that we can better understand you.

We will ask you questions about:

• family life
• hobbies
• education
• childhood experiences
• what you are struggling with at present
• how things could be better for you
• goals you might have to improve things

We also ask questions around your safety within yourself, at home and in the community. We offer you time to be seen alone in the assessment if that would be helpful for you. We encourage you to think about some of these topics, your strengths, and challenges ahead of the appointment. You are welcome to write notes down and bring this with you. This might be helpful in making sure you share as much information with us as you can to help your assessment outcome.

We are here to learn what your needs are and how we can best support you. This might mean that other services might be more helpful for you based on what you would like support with.

Attending CAMHS is not something you have to do. It is your choice to work with us as your care will be led by you. If you do not feel ready to work with us or if you decide you would like to stop attending CAMHS once you have started, we will respect your decision.

All information you share with us in your appointments will be kept confidential between yourself and the team. If you share any information with a professional that suggests you may have been or are currently at risk of harm from others or to others, we have a duty of care to share this with the relevant services. If we need to do this, we will be open with you as to why we are doing this and who we are sharing this information with.

If you would like to help us celebrate good practice in our service, you can 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.