A friend has just had an emergency referral by her GP to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) for her daughter - but they won't see her without an assessment.

Who does the assessments? Why isn't a GP referral good enough?

Ooh! This makes me angry.

Simon

Our first referral way back was by our GP and the assessment was carried out by the CAHMS team.

Hope things stable at your house just now.

Take care
Dorothy x

My son is now on the CAMHS waiting list, having been referred throught the GP and the enurisis clinic nurse - it was not immediate and the first GP referral was refused. I think it helps to keep badgering them.

Hi there
My son was first referred to CAMHS by us his parents. The school helped us as he was not attedning school.We went for an assessment with the CAMHS team and they gave him a place really quickly. He was given a set of 12 sessions - self support with himself and a student in training. It was really useful and helped him get back into his classes within 9 weeks. However following his discharge and ongoing SR anxieties, he has relapsed. This time we went to our GP for a referral and had to attend another assessment. CAMHS team have agreed he now needs individual sessions. However we have been waiting several months since our initial assessment and due to his placement position on the waiitng list it is likely to be several more months before he is seen. We are trying to work with the school meantime. CAMHS takes time but it was worth the wait the last time around. Just hope we get more success this time around.
Take care Dawn

hi, I am new to all this as well, however I was told by the doctor that only school can do the referal to CAMHS and it was school who did the assessment. We had to write a letter confirming that we wanted our daughter referred. Her case is being reviewed in April so we are now waiting to hear.

hx

Our referral was through the GP. Took about three weeks and yes there was an assessment and other meetings before working out the support we needed. Took a long time but the support is invaluable.

Has anyone here had experience of CAMHS not helping their child due to the child being assessed as unsuitable for cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)?
Our son's problems started with a physical illness which took some time to be diagnosed and in the meantime he developed chronic pain problems including pain amplification. His treatment was physio, which worked initially but then he started to experience pain whenever he was stressed about going into school. Don't think he's anxious about school as such but he IS anxious about coping at school if he has a pain flare up. The result of this is he's become very anxious about school generally and even on a very reduced timetable he rarely gets in. Health professionals feel it's no longer the medical condition which is causing the problem now but his anxiety. However, whenever we try to get help for this we are told he is not suitable or not "ready"for CBT and no other therapy or treatment is offered. CAHMS suggested that if the problem is anxiety based, we could ask the school to threaten to prosecute us in order to force our son to go to school. This seems a weird way to deal with anxiety and would certainly cause us severe anxiety as his parents! We've talked about home education or online schools but our son is adamant that he wants to go to his current secondary school. Problem is he isn't getting in there and although he has some on-line lessons provided by the local authority they aren't stretching him at all and his work has improved little since the problem started over 3 years ago. Currently he's in Yr 8 and has hardly attended school since the end of Yr 5. We feel we are stuck in a loop with health professionals telling us it's not medical but it's anxiety based and CAMHS then saying they can't help. We have a good paediatrician who is very supportive but we don't feel we're moving on and our son isn't really getting an education. I believe some parents have tried arranging private CBT. We are interested but wonder if a private therapist will also tell us our son is not "suitable" for this therapy. I'd be very grateful for any advice or information from parents who've been through this.

HI leah
we have had the same problem. My son had a head injury a year ago and has totally lost his memory for anything before the accident. Initally CAMHS offered him Art theapy which seemed ok but the theapist is leaving so this has ended. The school suggested that we ask for CBT but he was acessed as not being ready as he is not able to talk about things as he has lost his language ability. They say that now his problem is anxitey and that they only deal with mental health problems not anxiety. We are considering private theapy of some kind as my father in law has offered to pay but it makes me very angry as I am sure there are pleanty of families who could not affort it.

Hi Leah and Sarah,

Sorry that many people on here do miss these posts - I did! We tend to just communicate via the other link. I will reply to yours, Leah on the other post - Sarah - you might want to cut and paste into the SR posting as well so that you get more responses. It sounds pretty tough. I have lots to say on CBT!
Linda