Dorset HealthCare’s CAMHS service has introduced a new part of the service to help manage assessments and provide some brief lower level intervention for children and young people up to the age of 18 experiencing problems with their mental health. The service acts as the ‘front door’ of CAMHS and has been introduced to help reduce the wait time for assessments and treatments that young people can experience when accessing the service.
This service is available across the entire county.
The service is known as CAMHS Gateway and it undertakes all assessments for referrals sent through to CAMHS. As well as undertaking all assessments, the service will provide brief interventions for lower-level symptoms such as anxiety and depression. Interventions will be provided via a number of different routes including: one-to-ones, group work, webinars and computerised cognitive behavioural therapy (C-CBT). If patients need more help or have more moderate/severe symptoms, they will be transferred through from the Gateway to the regular CAMHS Teams.
Patients will still be able to access CAMHS via referral from their GP but all referrals will come through this new service.
As part of CAMHS Gateway, the service is available for self-referral for young people aged 16-18 years old. Visit the Dorset HealthCare website to complete the self-referral form. The CAMHS referral criteria will remain the same.
If you are over 18, please visit the Steps2Wellbeing website where you will find information about this service and how to access it.
For urgent mental health support, please call our Connection service which is open 24/7. Dorset residents or people visiting Dorset can call direct on 0800 652 0190 at local call rate or access via NHS 111 for free. More information on our Access Mental Services is available on the Dorset HealthCare website.