Children’s Services and Adult
Learning Disability Services
Children’s Services and Adult
Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) is a specialist service for children and young people up to the age of 18 years old. We help those who have had very hard experiences or feel distress and need extra support. This can be because of feelings, relationships or situations which start to get in the way of home life, education, hobbies and friendships. This can make it really hard to cope with everyday life
We know that relationships are important in wellbeing, and so we like to work with families, parents/carers as early as possible when accessing CAMHS. We also work together with other services such as school, college, and social care. We know the importance of you deciding who you would like to be involved in your care. We aim to build a safe and supportive structure around the child/young person and family.
COMPETENCY and TRAUMA LEVEL: We want to help children and young people to be who they want to be by developing their own identity. This involves learning new skills to help one another and potentially processing of traumatic experiences.
REGULATION LEVEL: We want to help young people to regulate their own
emotions by understanding their feelings, thoughts and actions. We will help them to learn ways to express their emotions safely and effectively.
ATTACHMENT LEVEL: We want to develop relationships by supporting parents or carers to understand their child’s emotions.This helps parents and carers to
support their child’s wellbeing.
YELLOW LEVEL: We want children and young people to feel safe. This helps so that they can start to trust the people who are important in their lives. This is done by building relationships and routines, and helping people important to the young person to start understanding what might be happening.
As part of CAMHS journey to trauma-informed care, we use the ARC framework to think how to support children, young people and their families. ARC stands for Attachment, Regulation and Competency. The ARC framework is pictured as a house made of a foundation level and three main levels. These help us to work out the best way to help you and the other people around you. You can click on the picture to understand more about the different levels.
The framework is based on trauma, child development and attachment theories. This means that it understands that some childhood experiences can lead to trauma. It was first developed for children and young people and the adults who care for them, who had experienced complex trauma. Complex trauma means that a child has had more than one experience which is traumatic. The framework helps us to ask ‘what has happened to you?’ rather than ‘what is wrong with you?’
CAMHS are working towards being a trauma-informed service. This means practitioners and those who lead our services want to understand from everybody’s view what is happening for the young person and family. This helps us all to be clear about what is needed to make a difference. Everything that we strive to do considers the key points of Trauma Informed Care:
This means that you feel looked after when you meet with us.
This means that we can be honest with each other and that we will do what we say we will do. It means that we will also talk about the ‘good’, the ‘bad’ and the ‘ugly’.
We want to learn from you about what is important to you and understand why these things are important. We also know that sometimes people who have a similar story to you may be able to help too.
We want to work together to understand and help with what is important to you. This includes in your care as well as how we run our services.
Empowering others to have a voice and choice in what happens to them – We want you to be able to help choose what help you need.
We will be understanding of the qualities that make up you such as your gender and culture.
CAMHS is a name we give to many different specialist services, that include Core CAMHS, Eating Disorder Service, Looked After Children Service, Early Intervention, Acute CAMHS, Inspire (Inpatient) and the Neurodiversity Service. All our services are also designed to provide the right level of intervention depending on what you need at any given time. This will be influenced by the severity of difficulty and risk to self and/or others. The aim is to help children, young people and their families return to thriving
THRIVE is a framework that guides how we support others. We categorise our services into: Getting Advice, Getting Help, Getting More Help, and Getting Risk Support.
We aim to be trauma-informed in our care and support with you, making sure that important people, families and young people are all involved in helping you thrive.
How we workFor those who have thoughts and urges to hurt themselves or others and need crisis help.
Get Crisis Support
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