Herefordshire CAMHS Duty
Herefordshire CAMHS Duty provide assessment to children and young people who are in crisis, presenting either urgently in the community or at A&E/children’s ward.
The service runs between Monday-Friday 8am – 8pm. Saturday, Sunday and bank holidays 9am-5pm (with weekend assessment at Wye Valley Trust only).
The team facilitates assessment, care planning, referral to other CAMHS services and works in partnership with other appropriate agencies that benefit the child or young person's care. Follow up care in community is also offered. If more specialist intervention is required, the team can instigate admission to a specialist mental health hospital for adolescents.
The team also provide an advice line to professionals between the operational hours above.
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 us your feedback
CAMHS Services Friends and Family Survey
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.
If you have any queries please contact Kerry McFarlane, Patient Experience Lead - whcnhs.patientexperience@nhs.net. Many thanks