Service Detail

The Croydon CAMHS Getting Support with Risk team is a Tier 3 team in Croydon Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS).

Our service is for children and young people up to the age of 18 who are experiencing moderate to severe mental health problems. The people we see are typically those that have faced challenges accessing mental health services due to the level of complexity, a need for multi-agency input, and risk to the child.

We provide support to vulnerable groups including:

• looked after children
• children with moderate to severe learning disabilities attending specialist education
• young people known to the Youth Offending Service

We also support children who may be hard to reach, and who struggle to engage with other CAMHS teams where there is a significant mental health risk. Many of the young people we help have experienced trauma including domestic violence, child exploitation, and neglect.

Our model involves engaging and working primarily with the network of carers and professionals around a child. This work may include our clinical staff attending network meetings, and sometimes providing one to one therapy for the young person as well.

Our main clinic is based at Christopher Wren House, but on occasion we may provide input at home or school. As part of our work we also provide consultation to other services, such as children's social services and schools for children with special educational needs. We also support multi-agency working on safeguarding children in the borough.

Our team uses variety of therapeutic interventions, including Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT), narrative and systemic therapy, attachment-informed practice, and behavioural interventions.

We also provide a targeted service to improve access to mental health assessment and treatment for looked after children and young offenders who are beginning to experience moderate mental health difficulties.

Referrals
All referrals must be made by a professional associated with the child's care via theCroydon Single Point of Contact (SPOC) webpage.

Referrals can be made by a GP, paediatrician, school teacher, or social worker. Our team is unable to accept referrals from parents, carers, or self-referrals by the child or young person.

Our team members
Our service is made up of a number of professionals from different backgrounds who work together to provide multi-disciplinary care. This may include social workers, psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, learning disability specialist, psychiatric nurses, and systemic therapists.