Your questions and what things mean

Children and Young People’s Primary Care Mental Health Service offers support to children aged 4-18 years with mental health difficulties who live in the Gateshead area. We provide friendly and approachable NHS support for children and young people with worries and fears, sadness, emotional dysregulation, anger, and frustration which may impact on their friendships, school life, and sleep, eating patterns and enjoyment in life. We also work in partnership with parents and carers.

Our NHS children's and young people's services are free-to-access.

Currently referrals for children and young people with any mental health problems up to 18 years in Gateshead are made via the Single Point of Access (SPA): 0303 123 1147.

We also work closely with the Gateshead Primary Care Network Mental Health Peer Support Team who can offer peer support to ages 16+.Telephone number: 0191 283 2546

Our opening times are usually between 09:00am – 5pm.  During your appointment with your allocated therapist, you can discuss treatment times. We do offer after school appointments when available.

We aim to offer to see families in their local area within GP surgeries, libraries and community buildings.

If you need to cancel an appointment, please let us know as soon as you can or with at least two days’ notice before your appointment. This means that we can offer the appointment to someone else who is waiting. Due to the high demand for our services, we ask that all patients respect our cancellations policy to make sure appointments are available for those in need.

If you book an appointment and don’t attend, or do not bring your child/young person without giving us notice, you will be sent a letter asking you to get back in touch with us within 7 days.  If you do not respond to the request the child/young person will be discharged.  If you miss 2 appointments in a row without contacting us, the child/young person will be discharged.

You can bring a family member with you to your appointment. You can also choose to be seen without a parent or carer if that is what you decide.

We also offer support through drop-in sessions held across Gateshead every month (please see drop in section on website) and you are welcome to attend community health promotion events.

With consent we can speak with any professional or service supporting you or the family with your consent. Professionals can also attend Professional drop-in sessions and training delivered by our trained therapists.

If you live outside of the Gateshead area, please visit your GP surgery to discuss support in your local area.

A therapy to manage low mood to identify things that can help you feel better which involves thinking about things that are important to you and gradually increasing these activities or interests. It also involves using problem solving skills to help you tackle problems that may affect your mood.

CBT is a talking therapy where you are supported to identify what you are thinking, how you are feeling, what you notice in your body and what you do (thoughts, feelings, physical sensations, and behaviours) that happen in different situations. You will explore with the therapist ways to work together to try to change the thoughts and behaviours to help you feel better.

A therapy to help you manage your difficulties by understanding the links with your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. This therapy is used to help with a range of difficulties such as low mood, anxiety, phobias and self-esteem and usually you are offered up to 6 sessions.

An intervention, typically delivered in a group setting, which teaches 12 skills to children and young people to help empower them to recognise their own thoughts, feeling and behaviours. The intervention aims to improve emotional regulation, reduce impulsive behaviour, and give young people skills to manage their own emotions.

FRIENDS are a range of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) based programmes designed for groups of different ages of children to build social and emotional skills. There are parent and carer sessions alongside the children’s group sessions to promote children’s resilience. Each letter of FRIENDS helps the child and young person learn skills and techniques to manage their challenges (e.g. F- feelings, R- relaxation, I –inner thoughts, E- explore solutions, N- now reward yourself, D- don’t forget to practice, S- smile, stay calm and use your support networks).

A therapy to help you manage your difficulties by understanding the links with your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. This therapy is used to help with a range of difficulties such as OCD, PTSD, Tics, Selective Mutism, depression, anxiety, phobias and usually you are offered up to 10 sessions.

This is an online self-help treatment for anxiety and low mood for children and young people, where you would receive therapist support to access the self-help materials.

Online Support Intervention (OSI) is an online treatment offered to parents and carers of children aged 5-12 years with anxiety. The therapist meets the parents to discuss the Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) techniques that the parent can use at home to support their child.

PL-CBT aims to empower parents and carers to use strategies and techniques with their child to help them overcome difficulties with anxiety. This is suitable for parents and carers of children aged 5-12. This may be offered in a group or on an individual basis (on request).

An assessment is a collaborative process to understand the difficulties someone may be experiencing.

Capacity or mental capacity is the ability to make decisions for yourself, including being able to make decisions about your care. Sometimes people may ‘lack capacity’ because of certain illnesses, injuries, learning disabilities or mental health problems.

A care plan or treatment plan is a map of actions that identifies your needs and strengths as an individual. This plan can help both you and your mental health professional identify what things may be difficult for you, so you can plan goals and treatments together that maybe helpful.

Meaning that any information you provide to mental health services must be kept private unless you consent to it being shared with other people. If there are concerns about your safety or the safety of someone else, confidentiality may be broken. Staff will always try to tell you if they need to share your information with anyone else.

Saying ‘yes’ to something that affects you. You may also hear ‘informed consent’ which means that you are fully informed and understand what you are saying yes to. If you are unable to consent because of your age or you do not fully understand, we may ask your family/carers to consent on your behalf.

Services provided by local councils to protect and support the needs and welfare of children.

Early intervention is when a mental health condition is identified and treated at an early stage, which can reduce the long-term impact of the mental health difficulty.

This means when a certain treatment or approach (such as therapy) has been studied or researched and found to work well for certain conditions/difficulties.

The therapist you see will help you to develop a shared understanding of you and your families’ presenting issues. The purpose of a formulation is so that everyone involved can understand the individual’s main difficulties, so they can plan on how to deal with or manage them.

Goals in therapy are about what the individual attending therapy wants to achieve. Goals should be discussed and agreed. Goal-Based Outcomes (GBO’s) are scales, usually 0-10 that helps you and the therapist understand what you would like to be able to achieve from the support, to think about where you are currently at and to help see any improvements made throughout therapy.

Another word for support or treatment to help you get better.

We invite to complete a short questionnaire to share on a scale 0-10 how you are feeling in general about school, friends and family.

Safeguarding refers to protecting your rights to live safely and to be free from abuse or neglect. Local authorities have a legal duty to protect people who are experiencing or at risk of experiencing abuse or neglect.

The SRS is a simple questionnaire asking 4 questions about how much that you felt understood, did you talk about what you wanted to, did the therapist listen to you, and overall, how you found the session- did you like it or do you want anything different next time. There are different versions for different ages: child, youth, and parent versions available.

Sign-posting is when you are given information regarding a service or services which may be helpful for you.

Trauma can happen when a person has gone through a very stressful, frightening, or distressing event. Traumatic events can happen at any age and have a lasting impact. Sometimes people are impacted quickly following a traumatic event, whereas others aren’t affected for a long time.

We will ask questions to identify if there are any risks that may impact you or others, which is regularly updated through your time within treatment.

At the end of therapy support, you are invited to think about what things has helped you feel better, the therapist may suggest writing a staying well plan to help identify your strengths, think about support from others and how to access any future support.

A state of being happy, healthy, and comfortable. This involves both physical and mental well-being, as they are equally as important.