What does CLAMHS mean?
Hello! We are the team at CLAMHS which stands for the Children Looked After Mental Health Service (Not a very great name we know: any other suggestions welcome! Check out the competition in the discussion forum – the best suggestion wins a prize!)
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Is CLAMHS part of Social Care?
NO - We are part of the NHS (National Health Service - so it’s like your GP, or doctors at hospital). We do work very closely with social care to help young people who are looked after by Lambeth.
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Why would someone be referred to CLAMHS?
When children first become looked after by Lambeth their social worker may ask us to think about the young person’s needs and how we might be able to help them think about the care plan (e.g. helping them to return home to live with their family, if this is the best thing).
For young people who have been looked after by Lambeth for some time, if there are worries that they are under stress, or that the person caring for them is finding this hard, CLAMHS may be asked to see the young person.
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Who will CLAMHS see?
We work with young people aged 0-18 years looked after by Lambeth Social Care. We mainly work with children who are living in Lambeth, or who may be returning home to Lambeth. We also work with young people who are in care to Lambeth, but live outside Lambeth, if it is not possible for them to get the help they need in their local area.
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What will happen when I see CLAMHS?
Social workers are usually the ones who ask us to see a young person. Sometimes, GPs, carers or young people contact us directly and as long as the young person’s Social Worker agrees, that is ok too.
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What does CLAMHS do?
Once we have been asked to see a young person, there are three things that can happen:
Consultation: This means we would talk to the Social Worker and other people working with the young person about how to make things better for the young person.
Assessment: Young people and their family and carers would be asked to meet with us and this gives everyone a chance to talk about how things are for them. The assessment is done so that we can see how we can help the young person. Sometimes we would need to meet more than once with young people, their family and carers to do the assessment.
Assessments normally happen in Brixton, but we can see people in their homes if that is easier. After the assessment we write a report about how to make things better for the young person. This might include things like where the best place is for the young person to live and also if they might find therapy (counselling) helpful. We always go through our reports with the young person before giving it to the Social Worker.
Therapeutic support: We set up a number of meetings over a period of time so that we can work on certain things with the young person. These meetings could be with the young person on their own or with parents or carers depending on what the therapy sessions were about.
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