Working With Children And Young People: A Guide To Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and Psychotherapy: An Introductory Series

By Connor Whiteley

Perfect for psychology students, professionals and anyone into psychology.

Clinical psychologists work with children and young people to decrease psychological distress, improve lives and give them hope for the future.

In this fascinating, engaging and informative psychology book, you'll learn about:

• How clinical psychologists work with children and young people?
• What Child And Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) are?
• How psychologists work with autistic people?
• What's paediatric psychology?
• And so much more.

If you want a great, easy-to-understand book with an engaging, conversational tone, then this is the book for you.

BUY NOW!

• Language: English
• Publisher: CGD Publishing
• Release date: Nov 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215251485

Connor Whiteley

Hello, I'm Connor Whiteley, I am an 18-year-old who loves to write creatively, and I wrote my Brownsea trilogy when I was 14 years old after I went to Brownsea Island on a scout camp. At the camp, I started to think about how all the broken tiles and pottery got there and somehow a trilogy got created.Moreover, I love writing fantasy and sci-fi novels because you’re only limited by your imagination.In addition, I'm was an Explorer Scout and I love camping, sailing and other outdoor activities as well as cooking.Furthermore, I do quite a bit of charity work as well. For example: in early 2018 I was a part of a youth panel which was involved in creating a report with research to try and get government funding for organised youth groups and through this panel. I was invited to Prince Charles’ 70th birthday party and how some of us got in the royal photograph.Finally, I am going to university and I hope to get my doctorate in clinical psychology in a few years.

Book preview

PART ONE:

CHILD AND ADOLESCENT MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

WHAT AREAS WE’LL LOOK AT IN THE BOOK?

The entire purpose of this clinical psychology book is to help you understand how clinical psychologists work with children and young adults in a wide range of psychological settings. This is great knowledge to know so you can deepen your understanding of clinical psychology but it is also invaluable knowledge in case you want to work in the clinical psychology job market in the future.

Additionally, whilst a good chunk of this book focuses on CAMHS services (more on that later on) which is UK-focused because these are the mental health services that I am familiar with, the vast majority of everything in this book is applicable to a wide range of modern, developed countries.

Furthermore, it’s important to know that when it comes to working in clinical psychology, let alone working with children and young adults, things really are always changing because of new pots of money that services can apply for and tap into, new developments and new initiatives from local, region and central government or NHS trusts.

As a result, the overall aim of the book is to give you a good sense of how services for young people and children with behavioural, emotional, developmental as well as physical difficulties are organised, and who works in these services, their roles and the activities of clinical psychologists.

In addition, we’ll look at what are Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and the different levels of CAMH services. For example, the traditional team or multi-disciplinary settings also known as Tier 3, the specialist or regional Tier 4 services, tier settings and tier 1.

Moreover, we’ll also have a good look at how clinical psychologists work in child development settings, paediatric health settings but also how we can specifically work with children that are deaf, have an intellectual disability and we’ll look at case examples too to help illustrate the theory and put it into practise.

What Are The Goals Of Clinical Psychologists When Working With Children and Young Adults?

When it comes to working with this particular clinical population, clinical psychologists are guided by 4 key strategic aims that help to keep them on track and focused.

For example, clinical psychologists need to foster innovation to meet the needs of excluded and vulnerable young people and children.

Secondly, clinical psychologists need to help promote good mental health to more children as well as young people than ever before, because of the sheer increase in people with psychological stress and mental health difficulties.

Thirdly and fourthly, they need to champion the voices of young people and parents to influence mental health policy and practice. Also they need to inspire excellence to achieve transformed, integrated services.

We’ll look at all of that later on in different ways.

How National Programmes Work In The UK?

When it comes to national programmes in the UK in an effort to help children and young adults with their mental health, the main programmes is the Children and Young People's Improving Access to Psychological Therapies Programme (also known as children and young people IAPT).

This programme is all about working with the existing Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) as well as the volunteering sector and local authorities to transform the delivery of psychological therapies at Tiers 2 and 3 across the entire country.

Additionally, this programme currently works with 67 CAMHS partnerships and this covers 54% of the under-19 population. Therefore, it isn’t perfect but it still manages to cover a good chunk of this clinical population.

Moreover, this particular national programme involves using session-by-session routine outcomes monitoring because this helps to guide the supervisor and therapist in their work, it helps young people to monitor and understand how their treatment is going, it empowers young people to take control of their care, choose their treatment approaches, establish treatment goals as well as take opportunities to improve their own health.

Also IAPT involves improving access to and the choice of evidence-based therapies so the young person can be part of this choosing process, and IAPT focuses on introducing the evidence-based organisation of care that focuses on building a way to build the capability to deliver positive and measurable outcomes for young people, children and families and IAPT works to transform CAMHS for the better.

Summary of CAMHS’s 4 Tier Structure

We’ll investigate all this information in more depth later on but CAMH services are provided by practitioners that work in a wide range of settings and services. For instance, health visitors, GP, youth workers and teachers.

Of course, these practitioners aren’t mental health specialists but they do have regular contact with young people and children. Therefore, they can offer them advice and treatment for less severe difficulties, how to promote good mental health, refer on to more specialist services as well as facilitate any early identification of problems.

Furthermore, Tier 1 CAMHS services are provided by specialist CAMHS clinicians working on their own in a community and primary care settings. These workers might be clinical psychologists, child psychiatrists or community mental health nurses. Also they tend to offer consultation to other families and professionals to support the identifying of children or young people with severe or complex needs.

When it comes to tier 2, these are services provided by more specialised professionals for children and young people with very serious mental health difficulties with young people in this tier could be seen as outpatients, inpatient units or in day units.

Finally, tier 4 services are provided by a service working in a community mental health clinic, child psychiatry outpatient service or community setting or a multi-disciplinary team. Since these professionals offer a very highly specialised service for people with the most severe, complex and persistent mental health conditions.

And because there is an entire chapter dedicated to tier 3 services as this is the most important tier for clinical psychologists, we’ll focus on that a little bit later in the book.

WHAT ARE CAMHS?

We already know from the last chapter that Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) are a UK service and they are the service that children and young people will go to for psychological treatment.

Building upon this further, CAMHS are mainly run by the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) and local government services with the NHS services in England being commissioned by Clinical Commission Groups (CCGs) and if you wanted some more information about the CCGs then you can go to this website page but I do explain a lot more in a moment:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/who-commissions-nhs-services/ccgs/

Therefore, these CCGs are in charge of deciding what services are needed and then they commission them, with some of