Herefordshire CAMHS Crisis and Home Treatment Team (CAHTT)

CAMHS CAHT T works within the community and in clinic bases, completing urgent assessments and offering intensive support to children and young people who might otherwise require inpatient care or are in need of intensive support that exceeds the normal capacity of other CAMHS teams.

We support children and young people experiencing a mental health crisis, undertaking assessments for those admitted to the paediatric ward for self-harm and suicidal ideation (wanting or thinking about taking your own life) or presenting in crisis within the community, which may include visiting you at home with your family.

We may offer care planning, intensive short-term treatment in the community, referral to other mental health services (both within and outside of CAMHS) and working in partnership with other appropriate agencies, ensuring the child or young person’s care and wellbeing is prioritised.

The team offer follow-up appointments and emergency assessments, 7 days a week.

We work with partners and multi-agency groups such as paediatric wards, schools, children services, mental health liaison in acute hospitals, adult mental health teams and inpatient mental health hospitals. If more specialist intervention is required, the team can instigate admission to a specialist mental health hospital for adolescents.

We also provide advice to other staff members and are proud to facilitate students on placement.

Service details:

Service hours:  Monday – Friday,  8am - 8pm. Saturday and Sunday, 9am-5pm (with weekend assessment at Wye Valley Trust only).

Location:   Herefordshire, countywide

 

Herefordshire CAMHS Single Point of Access (SPA) referral information

The information below is used to refer to all Herefordshire CAMHS services, apart from the Eating Disorders service.

All referrals into Herefordshire CAMHS must be completed by professionals using the CAMHS referral form. Guidelines for referrers is also available.

The CAMHS team in Herefordshire receive referrals from people who work closely with children and young people such as GPs, school nurses, health visitors, social workers, specialist staff within schools and paediatricians.

Referrals are screened by the team to make sure they are suitable and to identify urgent referrals. When a referral is accepted the family or young person will be invited to make a CHOICE appointment. Other professionals may also be invited to this appointment.

Confidentiality

Confidentiality is very important to CAMHS - all the information given in CAMHS appointments is confidential. Usually only the person who made the referral and the GP will know about the appointments.

The team will only share information about young people when we feel it is absolutely necessary, and the clinicians will always explain what information is being shared and why.

Sometimes it can be helpful to share information, for example with schools or other health staff.

The CAMHS clinician will discuss the information to be shared and ask children, young people and their families/carers for consent to share. Sometimes young people do not want to share their information with their parents/carers. This can be identified in the referral. The CAMHS clinician will discuss this with the young person to understand more about their circumstances and assess whether they are competent to make that decision for themselves.

If there are concerns that a child or young person may be at risk of harm, CAMHS will always share this information with the relevant agencies, though we would hope to inform the child or young person and their family/carers about the referral and the reasons for this.

If you are unsure about anything, please ask the team.

Help and resources

If you are a child or young people please visit the our information section to find out more about feelings and emotions.

Give feedback on our services

We are always looking for feedback on our services and we would love to hear from you. You can complete the quick CAMHS feedback survey here.