Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS)

What is Leeds CAMHS?

Our service provides a range of assessments and therapeutic interventions to promote the emotional and psychological well being of children, young people and their families who live in the Leeds area. We also offer training and consultation to staff from organisations which work with children and young people.

Many young people have emotional and associated behavioural problems (for example anxiety, depression and eating disorders) at some point in their childhoods. Most of them will have these needs met by their families or universal services (such as school-based services, health visiting or school nursing). However, when problems persist despite this intervention and start to significantly affect daily life a referral to CAMHS may be appropriate.

We accept referrals of children and young people up to their 18th birthday. We do not accept self referrals but you can find our more information about the professional who can refer to us here.

What do we offer?

Once a referral has been received and accepted, families are usually seen in a consultation clinic.This is the leaflet we send to families who have been offered a consultation clinic session.

In consultation clinic you and a CAMHS clinican will work together to think about the issue and what or who might help. For many families these two or three sessions are all that's needed.

However if following these sessions you do need more help, we offer what we call follow-on work.

Examples of this include:

• individual therapy (such as cognitive behavioural therapy or psychotherapy)
• family therapy
• group work (such as parenting groups or group psychotherapy)
• specialist clinics (such as the eating disorders clinic)
• specialist assessments (for example for ADHD or Autistic Spectrum Conditions)

For a small number of young people highly intensive assessment and treatment packages are needed.  Leeds CAMHS provides this, both on an in-patient and  intensive outreach basis.  Children and young people offered these interventions will have had significant previous input from within our service.

Forensic CAMHS services are provided by the CAMHS Inreach Team at Wetherby Young Offenders Institute. Additionally CAMHS nurses are based in the Leeds YOT's (Youth Offending Team's).

More information for professionals

More information for families and young people

The Leeds CAMHS webpages contain links to other sites we think you may find useful. Disclaimer: Leeds CAMHS is not responsible for information held on any of the websites linked to.

The documents on our website are saved using Adobe. If you do not have a viewer for the Adobe PDF files, a free one is available here.

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