"I am different, not less." Mental health support for children/young people with SEND
If you or your child are under 18 with Special Educational Needs or Disabilities (SEND), and you have tried to access mental health support, we'd like to hear from you.
We are collaborating with Parents and Carers Alliance MK (PACA) to explore the experiences of children and young people in the SEND community who need access to Children's and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS).
We are revisiting the findings from our 2022 report, which gathered personal experiences from families, and made recommendations based on the evidence shared with us. We want to see what progress has been made, and where improvements are still needed.
If you have personal experience, please take the time to complete our short feedback survey. Every contribution helps. We can't change anything without your evidence.
Take the SEND mental health survey now
Background
We gathered evidence through community outreach, and made specific recommendations to CAMHS based on the personal stories families had shared with us.
CAMHS (who are run by Central North West London NHS Trust) welcomed our report which highlighted the distress faced by hundreds of families who are waiting for mental health support.
They acknowledged, ‘we aren’t getting this right around mental health services’.
CAMHS committed to making changes which included:
- Changes to the language they used
- Better managed waiting times
- Better communication with patients and families at every step of the process
- More streamlined referrals
- Improved pre-diagnostic support
Read our 2022 CAMHS report and response
We are now working with PACA MK to monitor what progress has been made, and what changes still need to be implemented.
