Department of Health

Consultation with CAMHS – what to expect

Key messages

  • CAMHS works with primary care providers to provide effective responses to children and young people with mild to moderate mental illness.
  • CAMHS consult with other services to promote early intervention and effective care.
  • CAMHS provides outreach, consultation and training.

Child and Adult Mental Health Services (CAMHS) provides consultation to other service providers working with children and adolescents to promote early intervention and effective delivery of primary level responses for children and young people experiencing mild to moderate mental health problems. This strengthens their mental health knowledge base.

In order to promote efficient and effective care at the most appropriate level, CAMHS assist primary care services such as GPs, community health services, and student wellbeing and support services.

CAMHS also work with secondary-level services working with children and young people with mild to moderate problems, such as paediatricians, physicians and other specialist services, including acute medical and drug and alcohol services, to:

  • provide one-off and regular outreach and community-based primary and secondary consultations to enable shared care for those with mild to moderate problems, using appropriate technologies (such as. video-conferencing), tools (for example, common referral frameworks) and collaborative approaches to support earlier access to quality mental healthcare
  • provide training to support management of mild to moderate problems and better linked practices (such as care team training)
  • agree on service pathways that fast track referrals of high-risk and vulnerable individuals and families to and from specialist care
  • support peer learning, education and training to enable these functions.

    Reviewed 29 May 2015

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