What are your thoughts on CAHMs?

[furrylittlecreatures]

Anyone's dcs being seen by CAHMs.? We had our assessment session and got to say I wasn't overly impressed. Just wondered what other people's experiences are?

Mine goes regularly because he takes medication for ADHD. They're stretched to the point of snapping. Ours is OK once you're in the system, but there's just nothing there in the case of crisis.

How long ago did she stop and how did her current school handle it?

CAHMs were shockingly sh!t when I had to deal with them.

I work for the local Mind charity and they have some great services for under 18's (and over!) I feel they have more time to actually make a difference and can run alongside camhs most mind programmes are self referral so maybe you could try there :)

We had one very good practitioner and then a crap one.
Dd just turned off and we paid privately.

Our Mind is very small locally and only offers limited services for adults but thanks. We have been given an appointment for October and as she feels she can't go into school that's tricky as we needed some support before school re-starts to help her get back in

We were lucky and had an absolutely great and skilled worker who I will be eternally grateful to.
However...the service itself is pretty challenged and there were needless delays and dropped balls along the way..that said the service was shunted around different (widespread) nhs locations 4 times during the 2.5 years we used the service....so think that contributed a lot to inefficiency..
On balance though, they were great.

Yes, I said to them I understood re waiting lists and budgets cuts impacting upon service etc. just wish we could have just a few pre re-start of school as I have no idea how to get her back into school on my own!!

Can the school itself help? We had a few school refusal issues this past year and the school were great at encouraging her to come to school, even if she didn't go to lessons. DD knew that if she felt shaky she could go straight to the students manager's office for a chat and spent quite sometime in the library.

School have been shockingly appalling (although they do have a terrible reputation for dealing with bullying). I will have to deal with them to work on a phased returned just wanted my dd to have some of her own strategies to manage once the bullying restarts. Also someone to help with ideas that would help settle her back in as school have none of any real use.

I am very open to words of wisdom from yourselves!

What did the CAMHS assessment identify as the problem? do you know who she is seeing in October? It may help to contact the SENCO at the school btw.

They said there were 'a couple of pieces of information missing' and when we go back in the autumn they will finish off the assessment ' but she can be seen by our service'. Basically she has quite severe anxiety triggered by ongoing bullying.