Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS)
The Phoenix Centre is a specialist mental health service that assesses and offers interventions for children and young people with emotional, behavioural or mental health difficulties.
Our team is made up of nurses, psychological therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists and a dietician, as well as other professionals, working together to support young people accessing our service for difficulties such as depression, anxiety and self-harm.
Within our service, there are also different specialties that meet the needs of care experienced young people; those living with long-term or life limiting health conditions; those with a learning disability, those struggling with drugs and alcohol use and young people coping with eating disorders.
Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services are offered at different tiers of Children’s Services
Within Children’s Services there are professionals offering support at different tiers. You are likely to have met with other people about your mental health before being referred to the Phoenix Centre (Tiers 3 and 4).
Tier 1 (universal services) is the front facing part of mental health services. These are the professionals you meet in day to day life like your GP, Guidance Teachers and Health Visitor. We also have access to Kooth online wellbeing service (more information about Kooth is available in the tab at the top). More information of other organisations that might be helpful is under the support and advice tab at the top.
Tier 2 are trained mental health workers who offer early intervention with the aim of preventing mental health difficulties escalating.
In Highland, we have Primary Mental Health Workers (PMHW) as part of our CAMHS. PMHWs support children, young people and families directly but also provide consultation to other professionals and parents to help them to support children and young people. This might involve them attending a Solution Focused Meetings to think together about mental health support that might be needed and where that would be best provided.
PMHW will offer assessments and interventions for those young people with mild to moderate distress, anxiety, or difficulties interacting with others.
They also offer training to support the development of knowledge and skills of school staff, health visitors and others in universal services.
Tier 3 and Tier 4 are based in the Phoenix Centre meeting the needs of children, young people and their families whose difficulties need more specialist support. We benefit from having lots of different types of mental health professionals working together in our team. We also work closely with the team in Dudhope if a young person’s difficulties need the care of the inpatient unit in Dundee.
How your contact with the Phoenix Centre might look
When you come along to the Phoenix Centre, the first thing we do together is to try and make sense of the difficulties you are experiencing. This might involve talking, using art or creative materials, playing or questionnaires.
We also offer some specialist assessments, which we might use when there is a specific question we want to try and answer. These may include:
Family assessment (your relationship with your family)
Developmental assessments (how you have grown up)
Neuropsychological assessments (things like memory, or attention)
Behavioural assessments (like at home, or at school)
Assessment
Consultation
An important part of the work that we do involves speaking to the other agencies and workers that you might come into contact with. We will ask you for permission to speak to those involved with your family. These may include:
Teachers
Nurses
Doctors
Social Workers
Support Workers
Intervention
If we think we are the right people to help you and we have an understanding of your difficulties, we offer what’s called a therapeutic intervention.
We will always discuss with you what type of intervention, or combinations, we would recommend and why.
These may include:
Psychotherapy
Art Therapy
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Family Therapy
Mindfulness
Group Work
