I feel like I have been trapped in some sort of nightmare with them. My daughter is now 14 yrs old and was first seen by them 3 years ago when her behaviour started to severely deterioarate with the move to secondary school. We first did brief solution focused therapy with her, 6 sessions over about 5 months due to staff being off sick, on AL etc. It made absolutely no difference, if anything it made herore anxious. This was followed by 'family therapy', which she hated; a lot of pressure was put on us to have it filmed for staff training which made things worse. This was with another 2 members of staff, one was an ex-pschiatric nurse the other had a degree in psychology. We were then told there was nothing more they could do but send us on a parenting course run by the early intervention service, this was absolutely shite, really obvious stuff like 'don't hit your children', 'try not to lose your temper', stuff which we already knew. Me and my husband feel very strongly that our daughter's got ASD and she is now being seen by someone else (another ex psychiatric nurse) who is trying to get her seen by a doctor for a diagnosis and also maybe looking at giving her some anti-anxiety medication. The whole time we have been treated so badly, the first two years as though her behaviour was due to really bad parenting - we're not perfect but I really don't think we are that bad. All of her behaviour suggests to me she has aspergers, I have worked with other teenage girls who have it who are so similar to mine; coped well up to adolescence but now really struggling, meltdowns, routines extremely important, can't change plans, v inflexible thinking, reeling off sentences which are direct quotes from books, lack of eye contact, obsessions with different hobbies then dropping them suddenly etc. I just feel if anyone actually spent some time with her and got to know her it would have been pretty clear. Instead we are treated like Munchausen's parents for even suggesting she may have ASD, treated like we are terrible parents. I'm at my wit's end now and don't know what to do. I can't believe how awful our experience with CAMHS has been. Am I being unreasonable?
AIBU?
Not everyone can afford to go private though.
Quite true. They can't. I was very lucky in the sense that my family helped pay for DSs private assessment, but the past treatment from the NHS services meant even DK was at a loss as to how to move this forward to benefit DS. Why? Because she had hardly any background from anyone, and kept repeatedly saying 'I don't understand how there's not more professionals involved in his care'. But that's because we had had the behavioural therapist from CAMHs on a home visit witness DS at his absolute worst, and still put in a "He's fine" report; or the time when my 6yo DS was repeatedly coming out of school with suicidal ideations and actively trying to carry them out too (wriggling free and running out into the road to get run over on purpose) but CAMHs took his SENCOs words as gospel when told "He's just attention seeking". 
or the only paed available in our area covering thousands of patients, that 'DS cant have ASD, because he talks to me okay'. 
All of the above is just a snapshot into what happens when you're stuck with absolutely shit services from CAMHs and the like.
These places are massively underfunded but choose to waste resources on inappropriate parenting courses
100% agree with this. I've been sent on several of these courses. One was specifically tailored for children with additional needs. So imagine my catsbum face when the host was telling people that these kids choose to wind their parents up and I quote 'just simply manipulating their parents' 
My DS don't know his arse from his elbow some days never mind have the wherewithal to create cunning manipulative plans.
papayas , if my experience is anything to go by, they are all to delighted to get someone off their lists. It's really good that you have found someone to help 
AndNow, I'd applied for DLA when my DD was in that situation. Computer said no.
This is no reason for anyone not to apply, btw. You might actually get a human being assessing your claim. Just don't bank on it, that way you won't be as disappointed as I was...
CAMHS offers a lot of false promise, but the truth is, apart from a diagnosis (which we WERE lucky to get - that was a quite smooth process, although it ultimately took a year) they offer no actual, direct help.
That responsibility is usually passed to the school or Family Therapy. Which is not much cop really
So, read up, put any strategies in that you can think of (Thornrose - what changed my life was reading Non Violent Resistance book which made me realise that I was the most important person in ds2's life NOT school or a therapist or bloody CAMHS) My strategy was to home educate ds2, and make new friends with those who had different approach to children's learning. Not for everyone.
I think there is a stage where you believe someone out there can help but it certainly isn't CAMHS 
Mumsnet is much much better at giving advice.
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