Jigsaw – CAMHS
Who are Specialist CAMHS?
Pennine Care’s CAMHS aims to promote the emotional and psychological wellbeing of our children and young people. CAMHS is used as a term for all services that work with children and young people who have difficulties with their emotional or behavioural wellbeing. It stands for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service.
The CAMHS directorate community services and the Hope and Horizon inpatient units are committed to developing connections with other local services such as social care, paediatrics, education, health and the voluntary sector.
Specialist CAMHS (child and adolescent mental health services) are NHS mental health services that focus on the needs of children and young people with more significant mental health problems. They are multidisciplinary teams that include Psychiatrists, Psychologists, Mental Health Nurses, Mental Health Practitioners, CBT Therapists Family Therapists and Counsellors. CAMHS is a specialist CAMHS service operating across 6 boroughs including Stockport. To discuss making a referral, please contact your local team.
CAMHS works with children and young people with a range of emotional or behavioural problems such as anxiety, depression, OCD, trauma, eating disorders, self-harm, suicidal urges or challenging behaviours. CAMHS also helps diagnose and then support young people with neuro-developmental disorders such as ADHD, ASD and Tic Disorders.
CAMHS does not usually work with problems like grief, anger, stress or unhappiness as these problems are usually best addressed through schools and friends and family. Everyone has times in their life when they feel very sad and things are very difficult. It is not always helpful to see these times as being signs of mental health problems needing ‘treatment’ but as a natural part of life and living where support from friends and family and other trusted adults is the best way to move forward.
CAMHS need parental consent to see you if you are under 16. So this means they need to know you are coming. There are other communities and online resources that you can contact without your parents knowing.
They have a very useful website where this is explained more fully and there are details of apps, resources and other services that may be useful: