Specialist teams and services

• Partnership for Inclusion in Neurodiversity (PINS)

The mental health conditions typically seen are:

• Anxiety disorders
• Depression/low mood
• Psychosis
• Obsessive-compulsive disorders
• Eating disorders
• Self-harm / suicidal thoughts

North Lincolnshire CAMHS provides a range of interventions as identified by the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence guidelines to address the identified needs of each child, young person and family. This could include individual, group therapies, family work, medication where indicated, inpatient care if required, joint working or providing support to other agencies in a consultative manner.

CAMHS runs the THRIVE model of care. This means pathways are split into Getting Advice, Getting Help, Getting More Help and Getting Risk Support.

The team accept referrals from young people, parents/carers and professionals.

This team provides multiple functions:

• Single point of access – responsible for triaging referrals, signposting and guidance, completing onwards referrals, advice and support
• Consultation to professionals including education providers, early help and youth justice to look at what support can be provided outside of CAMHS
• Here and Now Therapy – this model of care is goals focussed and a short-term intervention

If needed Getting Advice can refer care into Getting Help.

Getting Help is the next stage in the THRIVE pathway, though you do not need to have accessed Getting Advice to access Getting Help.

Getting Help is designed to support children and young people whose mental and emotional health needs are considered to be more complex and/or enduring.

Getting Help may complete further, and more in-depth assessment of a young persons needs.

Care may involve:

• 1:1 session with an allocated worker
• Group work sessions with other young people
• Working with other professionals' doctor or therapist.

If needed CAMHS clinicians can collaborate with the psychological therapies team, and this forms our Getting More Help offer of care. This can include access to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Interpersonal Psychotherapy and Drama Psychotherapy.

Children and Young People's Mental Health Service – Community Services (Doncaster, North Lincolnshire & Rotherham). Community-based services for children and young people with urgent mental health needs.

Overview

The CAMHS Crisis Team are a specialist trust wide team offering urgent assessments 24 hours a day 7 days a week for three acute sites, Doncaster Hospital, Rotherham Hospital and Scunthorpe General Hospital. The service has a dedicated helpline. Typically, this is a child or young person where there is significant risk to self or others. We work in partnership with families and other agencies involved with the child or young person, to carry out assessments. We accept referrals from children and young people up to the age of 18 years of age (transition to adult services begin at 17 and a half years old). Young people and their families can refer directly to the crisis by contacting the Single Point of Access Service (01302 566999 or 0800 8048999) 24/7. Additionally, through A&E’s, Ambulance services, Police, schools, social care and GPs can also refer directly via SPA (see above)

Children and Young People’s Mental Health Service – Community Services (Doncaster, North Lincolnshire & Rotherham). Community-based services for children and young people with mental health needs

Overview

The Intensive Community Support Services are a specialist trust wide team providing extended assessments trust wide. Typically, this is a child or young person where there is significant risk that the network is struggling to manage in the community. We also provide intensive support to young people at risk of being admitted to Tier 4 hospital settings. This can be flexible from daily visits to twice a week contacts, this is planned with the young people and families. ICST also provide support to young people being discharged from Tier 4 and are involved throughout admissions to facilitate effective transitions back into the community.

We work in partnership with families and other agencies involved with the child or young person. We accept referrals from children and young people up to the age of 18 years of age (transition to adult services begin at 17 and a half years old). We accept referrals form colleagues who are concerned about a young person’s presentation and feel they may need intensive community support or a tier 4 admission as the risks cannot be managed in the community via System 1.

We are a small team within the mainstream North Lincolnshire Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS).

Our team consists of Specialist CAMHS learning disability nurses, psychiatrist, psychologist and a clinical support worker.

Our aim is too support children and young people with a significant intellectual disability who experience challenging behaviour or mental health difficulties.

We work in partnership with families and other agencies involved with the child or young person, to carry out assessments and interventions with individuals, families or groups, or offer consultation to agencies.

The specific services we provide

• Assessment of skills, strengths and specific difficulties
• Psychiatric assessment and medication
• Functional Behaviour Assessments
• Positive Behaviour Support Framework
• Behaviour management advice & interventions
• Counselling for young people and parents
• Psycho-education
• Adapted Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
• Training in Intellectual disabilities and mental health or developmental problems
• Group work
• Family work
• Support in conjunction with Neurodevelopmental pathways such as; Autistic Spectrum Condition (ASD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
• Emotional Regulation

We may also offer consultation and training to other services and families, including those working with pre-school children, and where appropriate may work jointly with referrer and other services to offer the best package of care.

Our pathway and referral process

Our pathway provides a service to children who have a significant intellectual disability (moderate/ severe/profound). Who have additional complex behaviours or mental health which requires the input of specialist provision.

We work with children and young people aged between 5 and 18 years (transition to adult services begins at 17 years 6 months).

The child or young person must be registered with a local GP in North Lincolnshire.

Anyone involved in a child or young persons life can make a referral if there are significant concerns in relation to behaviour or mental health. We follow the same pathway as CAMHS and a referral form can be found on our CAMHS website.

During the referral process we will gather information on the child or young person assessing their intellectual disability and primary need. This may include visiting the child within their school and home environment. It is important to observe a child or young person in both environments to get a holistic view of what may be causing their behaviour or mental health difficulty.

We are a small team within the mainstream North Lincolnshire Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, also known as CAMHS made up of Psychologists, Art Psychotherapists, a Mental Health Nurse and an Assistant Psychologist.

We work with children and young people age between 5 and 18 years old who have care experience which means children living in foster care and care leavers. We also work with adults caring for younger children.

Sometimes young people may need support with the emotional and mental health past the age of 18 and we then support these young people to transition to adult services if the young person consents to this. Transition means moving from one service to another.

Types of help we offer

The focus of any therapeutic support will be based on what is important to you and helping you to have good mental health. We use a variety of different therapeutic approaches depending on the age of the young person we are working with and what feels right to you and include talking therapies, art or play therapy approaches or a mixture of these.

• Help with regulating different emotions. This means learning about the emotions you experience, understanding them including when these feelings are around, where they happen and who you are with, and how to cope with them.
• We can help with different emotions such as anger, anxiety and worry or feeling sad (sometimes called low mood).
• Help with coping with new situations and new relationships.
• We can help you in thinking about your experiences including loss and trauma (trauma means an upsetting experience that has impacted you).
• We can help with mental health difficulties including: anxiety; low mood; phobias (meaning fear of certain objects, places, situations, animals and/or people); Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), (this is having upsetting thoughts (obsessions) that lead to behaviours that have to be repeated – compulsions), and psychosis (this is the experience of hearing or seeing things that other people cannot see or hear)
• We can also help with difficulties relating to food and eating.
• We can help you to have positive relationships with others.
• Help for if you self-harm.
• Assessment of mental health and emotional wellbeing. This means we would think together about how you are feeling, what you might be finding difficult at that time, what you might have experienced and how this might be making you feel, as well as what you feel is going OK in life.
• We also provide therapeutic parenting advise to foster cares. Therapeutic parenting is a nurturing way of parenting to help young people to feel safe in their relationships with adults.
• Therapy might be offered with you and your foster carer together. The aim of this kind of therapy, which is sometimes called dyadic (meaning 2 people) is to help with positive relationships, understanding relationships and to help build trust.
• Sometimes CAMHS work with foster carers, social workers and school staff; we call this a network meeting (the word network here means other people who might be involved in supporting you). These meetings are to make sure we are all working together to support you.

Referral Process

As a young person you will need to be registered with a GP (Doctor) in North Lincolnshire. If you are 13 or older you can make a self-referral to CAMHS, this means you can fill out the online form yourself, or you can ask an adult to do this for you, for example this could be your social worker or foster carer. If you are under 13 an adult can fill in the referral for you, the adult will ask if you are consenting to the referral before they do this, consent means they will ask your permission.

Anyone involved in a child or young person’s life can make a referral to CAMHS if they are worried about a young person’s emotional health and well-being or mental health.

The online referral form can be found on the RDaSH website.

Depending on how old you are and what the referral is asking for we will make a telephone call to you and also your social worker (this is called triage which just means collecting information) and will agree a plan with you or with the Network of people supporting you.

Our aim is to support and enable neurodiverse children and young people with social communication and interaction challenges and those on the Autism Spectrum to:

• have equal access to every part of education
• achieve their potential and make a successful transition to the adult world
• be able to assert their individual perspectives and experiences of the world
• benefit from attending schools and settings who understand the impact of social communication and interaction challenges and Autism and work with children and young people to find solutions to identified challenges
• be included in schools and settings who understand neurodiverse needs challenges and ensure reasonable adjustments are used in a strengths-based approach.

We work closely with the Complex Behaviour Team who support and enable parents to support children with complex behaviour presentations linked to social communication and interaction and other neurodivergent needs

Transitions can be tricky for autistic children and young people. The transition from Year 6 to Year 7 can be an exciting challenge with a lot to look forward to.

We have worked with schools and listened to parents to put together transition support to enable a successful move from primary to secondary settings.

Children will be supported on a strengths based, needs led approach ensuring they receive the appropriate support.

Please talk to your primary school if you have any worries . We are in regular contact with all schools.

All Year 6 autistic children’s parents known to ASET will have received a letter outlining transition support.

Please use the resources here to help you talk with your child about the prospective move and help them feel they can manage this confidently.

There are a range of professionals you can contact if you are worried. Who you contact will be dependent on your child’s age:

• Explain your worries to your Health Visitor, Nursery or Childminder. There may be simple changes you can make to support your child’s communication and interaction
• Go to your local Family Hub and ask to talk to someone about your concerns. They will work with you to decide what next steps to take.
• Talk to your child’s pre-school, school or college about your worries. If they are pre-school then support can be requested from the Speech and Language Therapy team (see Therapy pathways). If your child is attending a school/college talk to a member of Staff who knows your child well or ask to speak to the SENCO. They may or may not share your concerns but will listen and together you can develop a plan for next steps.
• You may want to consider asking a professional whether to start an Early Help Assessment. This will enable you to ask advice and be offered support from a with a range of professionals where appropriate.
• It is important you share any concerns with a professional who can then direct you to further support. This may involve liaison with the Autism Spectrum Education Team (ASET) and Education Psychology Service. Where necessary, they will observe/meet with your child, meet with you and other professionals who know your child well.

In North Lincolnshire we have a Multi Agency Pathway for autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

The Autism Spectrum Education Team (AST), Behaviour Support Team (BST), Education Psychology (EPS) and the North Lincolnshire Neurodevelopmental Service (NDS) work together to ensure that we have a strengths based, needs led process to support children and young people. We have:

• A single Neurodiversity Team offering a single point of access to assessments for autism and adhd
• A graduated approach to completing referrals which gathers a wide range of information
• Greater awareness is given to the support from ASET, BST and EPS as well as information from nurseries, schools and colleges. This is done at the earliest possible stage so that needs-led interventions are put in place based on presenting need regardless of diagnosis.

ASD-ADHD-Pathway [242KB] PDF

Once you receive the diagnosis you will be asked by CAMHS if you would like to have your information shared with the Autism Spectrum Education Team (ASET) This will allow the team to discuss your child with school and also to send you information about our courses for parents of newly diagnosed children. Our courses are delivered in person and run twice a year for 7-8 weeks. See Support provided to children, young people and families section below.

If you have concerns about your child in school, then you should speak to their teacher and SENDCO, they may already be aware and working with your child. One of our Team will be linked with your child’s school to offer advice and support for children and young people both with a diagnosis and those who have social communication and interaction challenges.

Look at our Local Offer pages for other support agencies, for example SENDIASS, Short Breaks, Carers Support Service, and North Lincolnshire Parent Forum.

There are also lots of national organisations which have informative websites for example the National Autistic Society.

Deciding when and how to talk to your child about their diagnosis is an entirely personal decision dependent upon their own level of awareness and understanding.

There are a number of websites and resources available that can help you know what to say and where to begin:

• NHS/RDaSH - Talking together about an autism diagnosis
• Bristol Autism Support – How to tell your child about their autism diagnosis
• West Midlands Autism – Talking to your child about autism.

The following books may help when discussing autism with your child:

• Autism, Identity and Me
• Autism: How to raise a happy child
• The Ice-Cream Sundae Guide to Autism: An Interactive Kids' Book for Understanding Autism
• The abilities in me: Autism
• Can I tell you about Autism?: A guide for friends, family and professionals
• Different Like Me: My Book of Autism Heroes
• Autism and Me: An Empowering Guide with 35 Exercises, Quizzes, and Activities!
• The Secret Life of Rose: Inside An Autistic Head

There is a range of support available including:

• Information about the Autism Spectrum and the impact it can have on the individual
• Support for your child/young person
• Liaison with professionals and agencies to offer advice, support and enable families with a solution focused approach
• SCIP and SPAA course details. One day course with the opportunity to attend specifically focused satellite sessions. Families can attend the sessions that they feel would be most beneficial.

There is a range of support for schools, settings and other agencies including:

• A Toolkit: The Autism Spectrum Education team Support Strategies document helps schools and settings identify needs and put in place simple strategies to help your child. This can be used with children and young people with or without a diagnosis
• Support packages and individual help to develop the communication, social interaction, imaginative and emotional skills of your child at all stages of school and college
• Information about the Autism Spectrum and related difficulties alongside access to a library of resources which can be used to support a young person in explaining their diagnosis. Support in explaining a young person’s diagnosis.
• Training for staff in all aspects of the Autism Spectrum, Social, Communication and Interaction challenges and associated training such as Social Stories and Sensory needs
• Advice to staff on your child’s individual barriers to learning
• Supporting schools in educating their own settings about the Autism Spectrum
• Educating classmates about the Autism Spectrum
• Help for your child with school/setting transitions
• We work closely with other professionals to provide ‘joined up’ approach to support
• We can offer bespoke training for agencies and professionals.

These are the people in our team:

• Tim Mellors, Lead Teacher
• Clare Noble, Teacher in charge of Primary
• Vicki Turner, Specialist Teacher
• Julie Dawson, Outreach Practitioner
• Tamara Pullan, Outreach Practitioner
• Wendy Brown, Outreach Practitioner
• Tricia Protheroe Outreach Practitioner
• Donna Ford Outreach Practitioner
• Rebecca Lyons Specialist Teacher

You can view the Autism Toolkit KS1 - KS2 document if you need further information and support.

• To provide support and advice for parents and carers of children with complex needs where behaviour within the home can be challenging to manage.
• To enable identified families to feel empowered to implement behaviour changes that will improve outcomes, build confidence, enable self-help, and contribute to them being safe, well, prosperous and connected.
• Work with other professionals to ensure children/young people with complex needs are kept within their family and communities as appropriate.

All children can behave in ways that are difficult to deal with and are generally linked to a child’s stage of development and communication. For children with Learning Disabilities or Autism, this behaviour can be more challenging, and parents/carers may require specialist advice.

Often, challenging behaviour is a result of frustration or anxiety. Adults may find this a challenge to understand and manage.

We support parents and carers to understand their child’s behaviour. We do this by seeking to identify what the child is trying to communicate through their behaviour and identifying ways to manage these which may involve changing responses and strengthening connections.

We work closely with a range of professionals and services.

The people in our team are:

• Sarah Huddart, Senior Officer
• Myra Seal, Outreach Practitioner
• Jaime Haigh, Outreach Practitioner
• Anila Haq, Outreach Practitioner.

In North Lincolnshire we have a Multi Agency Pathway for autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

The Autism Spectrum Education Team (AST), Behaviour Support Team (BST), Education Psychology (EPS) and the North Lincolnshire Neurodevelopmental Service (NDS) work together to ensure that we have a strengths based, needs led process to support children and young people. We have:

• A single Neurodiversity Team offering a single point of access to assessments for autism and adhd
• A graduated approach to completing referrals which gathers a wide range of information
• Greater awareness is given to the support from ASET, BST and EPS as well as information from nurseries, schools and colleges. This is done at the earliest possible stage so that needs-led interventions are put in place based on presenting need regardless of diagnosis.

View the ASD-ADHD Pathway [242KB] PDF

The North Lincolnshire Family Toolkit is intended to support families of children and young people with communication and interaction differences in the home. It will help you to:

• Have a better understanding of why your child might do what they do
• Identify things to try at home
• Help you give information about your child’s strengths and challenges to others.

Families can use the toolkit directly or with support from any involved professional to identify and discuss areas they would like help with.

The North Lincolnshire Family Toolkit [4.94MB] PDF

Deciding when and how to talk to your child about their diagnosis is an entirely personal decision dependent upon their own level of awareness and understanding.

There are a number of websites and resources available that can help you know what to say and where to begin:

• NHS/RDaSH - Talking together about an autism diagnosis
• Bristol Autism Support – How to tell your child about their autism diagnosis

Books that may help support your conversation

• Autism, Identity and Me: A Practical Workbook and Professional Guide to Empower Autistic Children and Young People Aged 10+ by Rebecca Duffus
• Autism: How to raise a happy autistic child by Jessie Hewitson (2018)
• The Ice-Cream Sundae Guide to Autism: An Interactive Kids’ Book for Understanding Autism: Debby Elley & Tori Houghton
• The Abilities in me: autism by Gemma Keir (2019)
• Can I tell you about Autism? A guide for friends, family members and professionals by Jude Welton (2014) (for readers 7 years plus)
• Different Like Me: My Book of Autism Heroes: by Jennifer Elder (2005)
• Autism and Me – Autism Book for Kids Ages 8-12: An Empowering Guide with 35 Exercises, Quizzes, and Activities!: by Katie Cook (2021)
• The Secret Life of Rose: Inside an autistic head by Rose Smitten (2021)

Referrals can be made by any professional working with your child. Parents/carers can also self-refer.

Before making a request for involvement from Portage, it is expected that children will have first accessed support and intervention provided by universal services, such as by a Community Nursery Nurse or Play and Development Groups, or through an early years setting as part of a graduated response.

Referrals for Portage involvement should be accompanied with relevant information about the child’s development, the names of other professionals involved, and an overview of previous support that has been accessed. If the child attends an early years setting then evidence from the setting should also be provided.

The completed referral form must be signed by the referrer and by the parent or person with parental responsibility.

Referrals are discussed fortnightly (during term time) at an Early Years Multi-Agency Meeting. The referrer will be informed of the outcome of the request within 10 working days following the meeting.

If you are unsure whether to make a referral you can contact the Portage Team to discuss on 01724 296679.

Please send the completed Request for Early Years Support Form and supporting information to EYMAT@northlincs.gov.uk.

Once it has been agreed that Portage will work with your child, you will be contacted by letter to inform you that the referral has been accepted. A Portage Practitioner will then be in touch with you to arrange an initial home visit. Sometimes there can be a little wait for this first contact depending on the time of year and capacity of the team.

During the first home visit, the Portage Practitioner will explain to you how they work with families and find out more information about your child. They will then plan further involvement based on the individual needs and circumstances of your child and family.

This can involve further home visits, invitations to individual sessions at a Children’s Centre, attendance at Early Help meetings (if applicable), and visits to see your child in a nursery or preschool (if they attend a setting).

It is the role of Portage Practitioners to:

• Assess your child’s development
• Identify strengths
• Identify areas of development to work on
• Support transition into a nursery, pre-school or a school-based nursery (if they are not already attending an early years education setting).

Our team is skilled in breaking down learning into small achievable steps. We will work with parents/carers and early years settings to demonstrate how this can be achieved with your child to enable them to reach their own individual potential.

If you are either looking for a suitable nursery or pre-school placement, or your child already attends one, we will provide support to ensure they are settled and have supportive access to learning – also supporting any transition.

We work together with other professionals involved with your child. We are also able to support you in further appropriate referrals to additional agencies if required.

Portage Practitioners aim to enhance the understanding, confidence and skills of the parents/carers and adults working with your child.

Portage involvement comes to an end when your child is due to start school (Reception Class), or if their educational needs are being met successfully within an early years setting and there is no longer a role for a Portage Practitioner.

The Tuition and Medical Needs Education Team (TAMNET) is an education service within North Lincolnshire, located in central Scunthorpe. We support children and young people (aged 4-16) to continue to develop their skills when they are unable to access mainstream or an alternative provision due to medical needs, whether these be associated with physical or mental health. The team was developed to support vulnerable pupils across all key stages.

Our aim is to meet the needs of each individual child or young person through the development of a personalised bespoke offer, drawing on the skillset of our multi-professional team.

A nurturing relational approach is taken to our work, with the whole team using positive communicative strategies to engage, support and move forward the individuals we work with.

Children and young people who are allocated a place at TAMNET will be initially taught either in the home/hospital/ or in a small classroom known as the Tuition Centre. The Tuition Centre is a classroom environment and class work will be completed just as in a mainstream room. A maximum of 10 young people will be taught in the classroom at any one time. Pupils can attend for a maximum of 15 hours per week (3 hours per day).

The aim will be to establish strong work habits that support the child in moving back into mainstream classrooms at their host school or in another school through a managed move process.

If there is a medical need that prevents a young person from attending the classroom, we can offer 1:1 home or virtual tuition. This can be up to 1 hour per day.

We have specialist emotional and social support delivered by our Wellbeing Specialist who, uses a range of therapeutic approaches, such as CBT, Mindfulness, talking therapies and psychodynamic and humanistic approaches to support maintaining and/or improving mental health and wellbeing.

Each session is bespoke depending on the needs of our children and young people and will focus on building positive trusting relationships, managing challenging emotions, self-regulation building skills and will provide strategies to support both acceptance and change. These sessions are confidential however, safeguarding our young people remains our priority.

All pupils requiring support in this area will have a weekly session timetabled in.

Wellbeing support can also be accessed as outreach to schools.

• Felicity Doughty – Service Lead
• Lorna Marvell – Specialist Teacher
• Joanne Wressell – Specialist Teacher
• Shaun Marvell – Specialist Teacher
• Emma Blacklock – Social, Emotional and Mental Health Nurture and Wellbeing Specialist
• Claire Laffey – Tutor
• Magdalena Stefanska – Tutor
• Kate Turner – Tutor
• Mary Ackroyd – Tutor

If you think that your child would benefit from accessing the Tuition and Medical Needs Education Team, please talk to your child’s school so that they can submit a referral. We do not accept referrals from parents/carers.

For further information, please contact us.

For more information please refer to the document below.

TAMNET Leaflet [1.81MB] PDF - Print only