Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust - Child and Family Health Service – Children’s Psychological Services

The service provides specialist clinicians who can talk with children, young people and their families/carers about their thoughts, feelings and behaviour. They listen to people’s concerns, try to understand their situation and find a helpful way forward. They support people to make changes for the better. The service works with children and families in numerous ways to find solutions to emotional health and well-being concerns they have, for example, when children, young people & their families have:

· Relationships difficulties – with friends or family, bullying, family breakdown, divorce, separation or death.

· Emotional difficulties – such as feeling anxious, sad, scared, angry & how this can impact on children and young people.

· Difficulties in adjusting to illness/medical conditions & coping with the treatment.

· Difficulties adjusting to development conditions, such as; autistic spectrum condition, dyspraxia

· Trauma and abuse – for example, effects of physical, sexual & emotional abuse or responses to single traumas such as; house fires or road accidents.

· Children with complex needs, neurodevelopment issues &/or mild to moderate learning difficulties and specific difficulties.

· Parenting problems with respect to management children’s behaviour.

The overall aim of the service is to promote the psychological health & well-being of children, young people and their families by addressing the following objectives:

1. Assessments: The service provides a range of specialist psychological assessments in order to meet the differing needs of a wide range of individual children, young people and their families aged 0-16 years.

2. Therapeutic interventions: The service provides a wide range of evidence based interventions with children, parents & carers and families including individual therapy, family work and group work on a needs-led basis.

3. Systemic interventions: The service adopts a systemic approach that understands the child within the psychosocial context and works with other professionals, parents and carers in this context through a process of joint working, liaison and consultation. This may be instead of or including more direct therapeutic interventions.

4. Consultation: The service aims to provide formal and informal consultation for staff within universal and targeted services to improve skills and competencies regarding the psychological understanding of children, young people and families.

5. Training: The service delivers relevant training to colleagues in universal and targeted services as required.

6. Evaluation, Audit & Research: The service undertakes ongoing evaluation, audit and research services to ensure optimal quality and efficiency.

The service enables and supports children, young people and their families adjust to diagnoses of conditions such as autism spectrum condition, learning difficulties, epilepsy and diabetes to name but a few. Supporting them to adjust to the changes that this condition could bring, and look to the future in terms of ensuring they have the tools and skills to manage the emotional pressure on an individual and their family.

Psychologists and therapists are trained in lots of different ways of working with children and families. The help offered will depend on what a family want and need. It may be working just with parents, just children/young people or the whole family. Sessions will last up to 1 hour and the amount of sessions depends on the concerns the family wishes to address.

The service also runs a small number of Incredible Years Parenting Courses for parents of children 2 – 12 years of age. The course aims to help the parent bring out the best behaviour in their child or young person, identify and monitor difficult behaviour and provide support to the parenting role.

The outcomes for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities are to improve and support emotional health and well-being and support children and young people through changes which bring about emotional pressure. Children’s therapy is individually tailored to meet their needs and can range from a single session or on-going support.

Who to contact

Contact Name: Children’s Psychological Services
Telephone: 01254 226480 01254 226480
Website: https://www.lscft.nhs.uk/.../CPS-East
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Where to go

Name: The Mount
Address: Whalley Road
Accrington
Lancashire
Postcode: BB5 5DE
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Availability

Referral required

Yes

Referral Details

Children and young people or parents and carers can make direct contact with the service. Referrals are made by GPs, paediatricians or other professionals into the service. Referral criteria specify that problems need to have a moderate to severe degree of impact or distress upon the child and family functioning. As a specialist secondary care service it is expected that parents and carers will have been in receipt of previous primary care services and interventions which have proved unsuccessful prior to referral.

The service is free of charge and children and young people should be seen within 18 weeks of referral to the service.

Evidence that the service helps children and young people and their families is collected at each session. Families are asked how the session has gone for them and whether or not they feel they have achieved their goals. The family is also asked if they feel the service is meeting their overall needs. Changes are tracked across the course of treatment being given.

The services outcomes are improved emotional health and well-being through a variety of techniques and approaches. This supports children and young people to develop and mature as well as supporting them to achieve good outcomes and their full potential.

Other notes

The first point of contact should be the practitioner delivering the care, however if there are any urgent queries or worries, the local base should be contacted. The referrer (e.g. GP, Paediatrician) can make an enquiry on the client’s behalf, to address whether they would benefit from the psychology service.

Schools, Health Visitors, GP’s, families and carers all have a role in providing support and interventions for children and young people. The service does not work out of hours, but in some cases you may be able to leave an answerphone message with the appropriate team.