Referral to Camhs

[SammyL38]

Hi there

I wanted to introduce myself and my facebook page.

I am a mum to 2 children. My older daughter has SEN and associated mental health issues. She has been unwell with it for many years and is only 10. In January last year things were so bad she was admitted to a childrens mental health hospital.

This was mainly due to a complete failure by our local authority and their camhs services.

I run my own support group and public awareness page.

The public awareness page can be found here //www.facebook.com/Its-Not-Just-You-1493432887573183/

In 2015 it was announced in the budget that £1.25 billion was going to be spent on camhs over a few years. However it is apparent that services have been cut further and families have not been receiving the help they need. It has transpired that the money wasn't ring fenced so not all of this years money may have made its way to camhs and was possibly absorbed elsewhere.

4 weeks ago I wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister about the state of the camhs services. Within days I was contacted by various media outlets and have been in the Independent on Sunday & various local newspapers. I was on LBC talking about childrens mental health and was also interviewed by the BBC and was on BBC News, BBC Breakfast and an audio version was on BBC Radio 5 Live.

Following the open letter to the PM I was swamped by other mums all who had, had terrible experiences with camhs for one reason or the other.

Because of this I set up my own camhs survey to find out what peoples experiences were. I have a few MP's (including on senior/influential minister) following my story and very interested in the results.

If anyone on here has been effected by childrens mental health and has either been referred to camhs or refused a referral for either budget reasons or other excuses please can I ask you to take a few minutes to fill out this survey. Its anonymous and I don't get to see who has completed it.The information will be shared in order to bring about a much needed change to the system.

//www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/INJY_CAMHS

Thank you