Our Mindworks Surrey community teams work across Surrey and are made up of health and social care professionals. These multi-disciplinary teams promote good mental health and provide assessment and treatment to children and young people up to the age of 18 with a mental health condition.
Our community teams assess and treat children and young people who are struggling with mental health difficulties, where these are having a significant impact on the child’s development and quality of life, and causing them and/or their carers distress. These difficulties may be causing the child or young person's functioning to deteriorate and problems to escalate.
The conditions we assess include:
- Depressive disorders
- Deliberate self-harm
- Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
- Post-traumatic syndromes
- Severe behavioural problems
People using our service must be under the age of 18 and registered with a GP based in Surrey.
Self-harm: Details of Surrey's Emerge Project which aims to restore hope for young people age 10 to 25 in the Emergency Department and beyond because of self-harm and suicide attempt can be found here.
Our aim is to provide services that are user-friendly, accessible, safe, effective and designed around children and young people's needs.
Anyone who is accepted into the service is invited to an initial ‘choice appointment’. This is a face-to-face appointment aimed at identifying what the child or young person and their carers want help with and reaching a shared understanding of their problems. From here, we discuss the range of alternatives open to them - whether that's signposting them to other services, providing strategies they can use to help themselves or considering an appropriate specialist intervention.
It's important to us to involve children and young people in the development of our services. They take part in consultations, training and recruitment and undertake a variety of projects to ensure their voice is heard throughout the service.
The User Voice and Participation (UVP) Team ensures children and young people have their voices heard in the services that they access. The UVP team facilitate a participation group for young people aged 10 to 25 who access mental health services called CAMHS Youth Advisors (CYA).
If you’d like to be involved in CYA or for more information take a look at CYA’s website or alternatively contact user.voice@surreycc.gov.uk.
We deliver person-centred interventions from our clinics across Surrey. Sometimes we see people in other community settings (such as their GP surgery or local wellbeing centre) if appropriate.
Our community teams provide specialist assessment and treatment for children and young people up to the age of 18 who are presenting with a mental health disorder.
The teams are made up of health and social care professionals. The interventions we offer vary depending on the needs of each child or young person and are delivered by the team member most appropriate to their circumstances:
- from health - Clinical Psychologists, Psychiatrists, Family Psychotherapists, Psychotherapists, Clinical Nurses and Dieticians
- from social care - Social Workers
We also perform a consultative role, identifying a child or young person's mental health needs and considering appropriate ways of meeting them in partnership with professionals already working with them.
Requests for support can only be made by health, social care and education practitioners. Requests can be made via the secure portal, by letter or phone. Please use the phone for all enquiries.
To make a request for support:
- Visit the electronic referral system - GPs only
- Visit the secure Riviam web portal - GPs, schools and other professionals
Please make your request for support on Google Chrome - Call Access and Advice on 0300 222 5755
We are open 8am to 8pm Monday to Friday and 9am to 12pm Saturday. The service is not open on bank holidays.
We will ensure that every young person being referred is in contact with the right service and gets the appropriate level of treatment and support.
Social workers for children aged 11 and above from the Safeguarding Adolescent Team (SAT) and Targeted Youth Service (TYS) should make requests for support through the social work pathway.
Some young people who have experienced our services share their thoughts on how we've helped them:
“I went to CAMHS from the ages of 15-17, the first few appointments I found it all quite daunting and wasn’t sure what to expect. I quickly built a great relationship with my workers and began to find speaking to them about what was going on for me easier than I expected. I found it helpful that CAMHS and my other workers linked together well and kept me involved and up to date with what the plan for my support was. I'm happy to say I'm now fully recovered and have been off medication and therapy for a year or so and feel without the support I received from CAMHS things would be very different.”
ES aged 19
“I first started going to CAMHS when I was 14, although it was scary at first my worker quickly made me feel comfortable and I was able to open up to her easily. My other workers were really good at communicating with each other and always involved me in decisions and made sure I was comfortable with any changes. They all encouraged me to come out of my comfort zone and try new things whilst giving me constant support when I needed it. Now two years later I’m leaving CAMHS a different and far happier person thanks to them.”
GB aged 16
“The first time I was told about CAMHS I didn’t want to accept any help as I thought it would make me feel defeated and hopeless, as it meant I couldn’t help myself anymore. Aspects of CAMHS are very challenging, such as being asked tough questions and finding the root of all my problems, but it does help as it made sure I had someone to talk to and who would understand and help me as much, if not more, than I could do alone. CAMHS has made me realise that I am not alone, and I know there is always at least one kind person who I can confide in and trust.”
GH
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