Referral Criteria – CAMHS

Conditions in scope

Requests for support from CAMHS will be considered where children are experiencing the following difficulties:

• ADHD with associated mental health difficulty
• Anxiety
• Attachment disorders
• Autistic spectrum disorder with associated mental health difficulty
• Depression
• Eating disorders
• Enduring emotional and behavioural problems
• Mental health problems associated with learning disability
• Obsessive compulsive disorder
• Prolonged adjustment disorders (i.e. post traumatic stress disorder or abnormal grief reaction)
• Psychosis
• Self harm
• Suicidal ideation
• Tourette’s and complex tic disorder

Urgent criteria

• Symptoms of severe depression with or without suicidal ideation
• Moderate/severe psychotic symptoms
• Eating disorders with urgent physical risk
• Moderate to severe risk of harm to self or others
• Severe unexplained deterioration in emotional state and behaviour at home and school not thought to be due to drugs, alcohol or physical illness

Exclusion criteria

• Children and young people who have a ‘normal’ reaction to life events e.g. bereavement/divorce
• Children and young people whose problems appear to be entirely school-related
• Children and young people whose parents are in legal dispute about residence/contact etc.

Pre-request activities

Sometimes the difficulties can be supported by a range of interventions across services. We may expect interventions to have been tried before coming to CAMHS, for example support within school, counselling, children’s centres, parenting groups etc.

Please consider whether this is appropriate before making your request and ensure that any supporting information is submitted along with the request so that clinical screening can be expedited.

Documentation required

Please review the list below and ensure that you have the appropriate documentation available to submit with your request (items in bold are mandatory):

• Completed Request for Services Form (to be completed by requester)
• Completed Devon ICS Information Sharing Consent Form (to be completed by parent/carer/young person)

Please refer via the Single Point of Access (SPA) process. If the local hospital are referring in for urgent assessment following self harm, the calls will be accepted directly into the locality team.