Children's Mental Health Week 2024 | BASW Blog
Celebrating its 10th year, Place2Be’s Children’s Mental Health Week runs from 5-11 February, with the theme for 2024 ‘My Voice Matters’.
Over the last year concerns about young people’s mental health and well-being have been growing exponentially due to in part to the Covid-19 pandemic and cost of living crisis. Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), along with providers such as Young Minds have seen increasing numbers of referrals, often at higher acuity, with 1:6 adolescents now experiencing a diagnosable mental health condition.
Life as a CAMHS Social Worker
Early into my social work degree I was provided with a list of placements to choose from. Intrigued to see the CAMHS on this list and keen to see where social work fitted within an NHS service, I ticked the box. The rest is history.
CAMHS social workers are located throughout the service, from providing initial screening assessments and early intervention to providing specialist forensic or eating disorder services and crisis home treatment. Within community CAMHS it is usual to hold a caseload of young people experiencing a range of moderate to severe mental health difficulties, often with a high degree of associated risk. Initial support is provided through individually tailored keywork sessions and after following additional therapeutic training develops to the delivery of specific 1:1 or group interventions to either the young person or their parents/carers.
Being a social worker within CAMHS is quite a different role from statutory children’s services or that of the adult mental health social worker. As with our wider social worker colleagues we bring our core knowledge and values, safeguarding expertise, professional liaison, and the ability to bring a social perspective to a situation. However within CAMHS you are working within an NHS service alongside psychiatrists, psychologists, occupational therapists or nurses and the medical model of mental health is ever present.
To begin with it, it felt CAMHS had eroded my identity as a social worker, the title being replaced by the term ‘Mental Health Practitioner’ and I found it strange to be sitting within a multidisciplinary team when, from looking around the room, it was no longer possible to identify someone’s core profession. However, I took comfort in knowing that everyone present was there with the backing of the young people from CAMHS participation, who had interviewed every applicant, and I rapidly learned to value the range of expertise on offer.
The value of social work has grown within the service over recent years, aided by the senior management being social workers who also oversee the Trust’s paediatrics department. I can now display my identity as a social worker and know that my perspective and promotion of a relational approach and biopsychosocial model of assessment is valued and helps build a collaborative understanding of what has brought a young person to CAMHS, in their words, rather than focusing on what symptoms they may have.
The team now has specialist social workers who advise and mentor AYSEs and apprentices, with peer support and CPD targeted towards the development of social work skills. Are things perfect? Not as yet, there is still a journey before parity exists between the value placed on and opportunity provided to psychiatry or psychology than occurs with social work however things are moving in the right direction.
Why do I love social work in CAMHS? Despite the pressures on the service and the increasing numbers of young people in distress, it never feels that I cannot give my time, attention and careful consideration when listening to the voice of every individual I work with. It is a privileged role, and one where I can make a difference.
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Claire Williams is a Senior Mental Health Practitioner – Social Worker, with Somerset FT CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service). Claire is also an active member of the BASW social work in health thematic group, which promotes the role and value of social work in health dominated organisations and is working for parity in terms of CPD and career progression opportunities for social workers in those organisations.
If you would like to know more about the BASW social work in health thematic group or the BASW mental health thematic group, please contact denise.monks@basw.co.uk