Our CAMHS Services
We provide children and young people’s mental health services across Sussex.
We help children and young people, their families and carers when someone is experiencing emotional well-being or mental health difficulties. We provide services across a variety of locations, such as GP surgeries, clinics, hospitals and schools, to support young people experiencing mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, self-harm, eating disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder and psychosis.
Our staff are trained to help your child to acknowledge and understand why they might be feeling and behaving in a certain way, and support them in their recovery to overcome these difficulties with the most appropriate course of treatment.
Click below to see a list of all our CAMHS services.
About Our Specialist Services
The Adopted Children and Adolescent Mental Health Service (AdCAMHS) is a specialist service in East Sussex between Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and East Sussex County Council’s Post Adoption Support Team.
Many children and young people have a good experience of adoption. For some experiences prior to adoption/separation from their biological parents can have an impact on their development and ability to form trusting and secure relationships with their new adoptive families.
AdCAMHS provides consultation, assessment and treatment for adopted children, young people and their adoptive families who are struggling emotionally. Their aim is to try and understand the nature of the difficulties, particularly in relation to being adopted, and offer a tailor made package of support to address their mental health needs.
This team provide a specialist service in East Sussex working with children and young people up to the age of 19 who have moderate to severe learning disabilities, who are presenting significant behaviours which challenge their families and others in their support network and which may be causing worry or harm to either themselves or others.
Learning Disability and Family Intensive Support Service service
This team is made up of a number of specialist learning disability and mental health professionals including: psychiatry; clinical psychologist; nurse and behavioural specialist. The team is based at Seaside View Child Development Service and we work closely with colleagues from Brighton & Hove City Council and Sussex Community NHS Trust.
Chalkhill is one of the country’s leading hospitals for treating children and young people with serious mental health problems and eating disorders.
The Child and Adolescent Multi-Disciplinary Psychological Service (CHAMPS) is the psychological service for children and young people in West Sussex, which helps to increase the input and involvement of psychological services in all parts of a child/young person’s journey through social care, to improve assessments, care plans and outcomes.
The service supports the mental health, emotional wellbeing and safety of children who are open to Children’s Social Care, and identified as having difficulties which could be helped with specialist psychological support.
The service operates Monday-Friday, 9-5pm.
A community-based service which supports people aged between 14 and 65 years old who have experienced a first episode of psychosis or are identified to be at very high risk of developing psychosis.
There are six teams: two in East Sussex, one in Brighton & Hove and three in West Sussex.
Each team works closely with the individual who experiences psychosis as well as their families to enable recovery. Teams are multidisciplinary and include psychologists, psychiatrists, mental health nurses, occupational therapists, social workers, employment support specialists and support workers.
A specialist community-based child and adolescent mental health service for high risk young people under the age of 18 who live in Sussex, Surrey and Kent & Medway.
We offer advice and support to any professionals who are working with young people, whose behaviour is causing concern for their family, community or others involved in their care.
Forensic Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (FCAMHS)
Our Looked After Children’s Mental Health Service supports children and young people who are looked after who are experiencing complex emotional and/or behavioural difficulties. We use an attachment perspective to help us develop a shared understanding of the difficulties and use a range of different therapeutic approaches tailored to the individual’s needs. We provide individual, dyadic (child and carer together) and family therapy, as well as consultation to young people’s networks. We also provide a Therapeutic Parenting Group for foster carers.
Our CAMHS Neurodevelopmental Service provides diagnostic assessments of neurodevelopmental conditions in children.
We have assessment teams in East Sussex, West Sussex and Brighton & Hove to undertake the assessment and diagnosis of ADHD for ages 6-18 and Autism for ages 11-18. This is known as the Neurodevelopmental Team (NDT).
The Neurodevelopmental Team includes the following professions:Psychiatrists, Psychologists, Nurses, Social Workers, Occupational Therapists, Mental Health Practitioners, Assistant Psychologists, Prescribers, Speech and Language Therapists, Managers and Admin staff. You will see a combination of these professionals during treatment.
We have a mixed team of neurodivergent and neurotypical staff who bring lived experience. This enables us to take a positive position towards the work we carry out, in order to make a greater difference to those children, young people and families/carers, as well as to support staff in their therapeutic practice.
A specialist service for children and young people aged 10-18 years old in Sussex, which works with families to develop a treatment plan and help achieve the best possible recovery for the young person.
The multi-disciplinary team includes clinicians, Psychologists, Psychiatrists, Nurses, Paediatricians, Family Therapists, Social Workers and Support Workers.
The Primary Mental Health Work service (PMHW) offers brief, evidence based support for young people and their families through group work, direct one to one work and wellbeing information sessions.
Our aim is to support young people with moderate mental health difficulties to access resources and skills to reduce the need for longer term, more intensive interventions.
We also provide training to professionals on a variety of topics around mental health and working with young people and families with mental health difficulties.
A community-based service, which supports mothers who are experiencing, or have previously experienced, severe mental health difficulties during pregnancy or up to a year after birth.
The service, which is made up of specialist professionals, including psychiatrists, mental health nurses, psychologists, mental health nurses and psychotherapists, provides support to women and families across East Sussex, West Sussex, Brighton & Hove and East Surrey.
The Urgent Help Service supports children and young people who are experiencing mental health conditions and difficulties that are putting themselves or others at risk, for example if they are having psychotic symptoms or showing signs of wanting to take their own life.
The service works closely with the young person, their family/carers to develop a care plan, which sets out their goals and what treatments they have agreed together to try. The team regularly reviews progress to make sure that the treatment is working and helping them to get back on track. If things are not improving they will look at other ways they may be able to help.
A team that provides a service in West Sussex for families who have children/young people with moderate to severe learning disabilities or severe global developmental delay, together with emotional, communication and behavioural problems. The service works with young people up to the age of 18, who have complex needs. Children who have an allocated social worker in the West Sussex Child Disability Teams are able to access this service.
This service offers consultation and support for professionals who are working with young people under the age of 18, and are concerned about a young person’s mental health and wellbeing. This may include professionals such as GPs, teachers, public health nurses, emotional wellbeing leads and support workers.