What is a Choice Appointment?
This is a meeting with a CAMHS clinician for them to hear about your current concerns and what you want to be different in the future. It is called choice as you will have a choice about what happens in the future. This appointment will normally be about 60-75 minutes. You are usually asked to bring an adult or person with parental responsibility with you as they may need to give consent for your treatment and may want to tell us their thoughts about what is happening. However, as you get older this isn’t always needed. If you attend with a family member/carer, CAMHS may ask if you would like some time to be seen by yourself.
It can be very helpful to make a note before your first appointment about why you have come to CAMHS.
Things that the clinicians usually ask you to talk about are:
The clinicians will listen to you and will give you feedback on the best option of support for you. This choice may be one of the following:
Sometimes, it may not be possible to decide this at the first appointment so we may need another choice appointment.
What is a Partnership Appointment?
This is a name of a follow up appointment in CAMHS for treatment where you, your family/carer and CAMHS will be working in partnership to improve things for you. This will be with someone who has the best skills to help you with your particular difficulty. Depending on your age and your difficulty, your family may be involved in the treatment or it may be that we agree with you how we keep them informed if you are seen by yourself. The CAMHS clinician may not be the one that you met in the Choice Appointment. However, this person will know what you have discussed and you will not have to repeat your entire story again, unless you find it helpful.
During your treatment they may ask you to fill in questionnaires. These questionnaires will help CAMHS to understand your needs better. These questionnaires are called Routine Outcome Measures (“ROMS”) and are completed for a number of reasons.
In your partnership appointment, you and your therapist will look at your goals of what you want to change in your life and listen to any ideas, concerns or expectations that you have about therapy in CAMHS. This is sometimes called a treatment plan: what the goals are, who needs to help with the goals, whether CAMHS communicates with school, other professionals and your family/carers.
Treatment is usually not time limited but it is important that CAMHS checks that treatment is helping you to feel better. There are usually reviews after three to six sessions, where CAMHS check with you and give their ideas about how things are progressing.
The CAMHS team may tell you when they think your treatment should end, but they will take into account the feelings and opinions of you and dependent on your age, those of your parents/carers.
If you reach the age of 18 years old whilst in CAMHS treatment, we can carry on seeing you until the end of the school year or it may be that you want to transfer to another service such as positive step.
Please be aware that you may be seen at either of the two sites, Weston-super-Mare or Clevedon, depending on room availability. However, we will do everything that we can to try and see you at the site that is most convenient for you. If you can’t make an appointment, please tell us as much as possible in advance so that we can rearrange.