Child and Adolescent Mental Health

Our well-established child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) are located within our hospitals in Maidenhead and Stafford with a new service now available at our existing hospital in Edinburgh. We provide assessment and care for young people with short-term mental distress or diagnosed mental illness. We accept patients detained under the mental health acts of England and Scotland.

Our teams are experienced in working with young people who have encountered a wide variety of problems including trauma, psychosis, bereavement, anxiety and behavioural and developmental disorders. We can also provide treatmentfor complex and previously treatment-resistant mental health problems, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and emerging personality disorder.

Please refer to our conditions treated directory for a full list of the conditions we treat.

We can provide assessment and treatment within either an intensive care or an informal setting at our Maidenhead and Stafford hospitals. This allows us to offer reversible care pathways, for example, the facility to “step down” from the intensive care environment or “step up” from the informal setting if required. At our Maidenhead hospital we are in the process of creating a dedicated four bed unit for those patients presenting with particularly challenging needs and behaviours.

By taking a specialist integrated team approach and by creating a therapeutic environment, we have low re-admission rates, which reflects the success we are now consistently achieving in rehabilitating the young people being referred to us.

Although all our children’s services are consultant psychiatrist led, we place a strong emphasis on the multi-disciplinary approach and patient’s care plans and reviews are agreed with the input of all team members. Our teams comprise:

  • Consultant psychiatrist
  • Staff grade psychiatrist
  • Clinical psychologists
  • Clinical nurse specialists
  • Senior and junior qualified nurses
  • Healthcare support workers
  • Teachers
  • Psychotherapists
  • Family therapists
  • Art therapist
  • Occupational and sports activity therapists
  • Social workers

Our hospital in Stafford also offer bespoke treatment programmes for young people (13-19 years) suffering from a brain injury.

For further information about each of our child and adolescent mental health services, please click on the following centre links: