Our Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services - also known as CAMHS - work with young people with emotional, behavioural or mental health difficulties, and their families.

Who is our service for?

Our service is for young people up to the age of 18 who have emotional, behavioural or mental health difficulties which are causing difficulties in their school, family or social life. 

How to access our service

CAMHS is a specialist service, which means that referrals need to be made by someone who has met you and thinks that CAMHS might be able to help. That person might be your GP, health visitor, school health advisor, social worker or a paediatrician (a specialist children's doctor).

Once we receive your referral, we get in touch with you as soon as possible to let you know whether we think we can help and to offer you an appointment with our team.

If you think you would benefit from support from CAMHS, make an appointment to see your GP, who will be able to make a referral to our service for you if they think we could help.  

What will happen at your first appointment?

Depending on your age, you would usually bring your parents or carers with you when you first come to see us, but sometimes we might need to see you alone. Sometimes we might need to see your parents alone too so don't be worried if this happens. It's important that everyone feels comfortable and able to talk openly about any worries they have. 

All appointments are held in private rooms. Your first appointment usually takes about 45 to 60 minutes. If you're offered more appointments, they shouldn't be longer than your first appointment and we will do our best to agree a date and time that works for you.

When you've had your first appointment, we may need more information to help us decide what we can do to support you. This may mean speaking to teachers at school or other people who are known to you. We would always discuss this with you first. 

When we have all the information we need, we will talk to you about it and decide together whether we can help. If we decide CAMHS is the best service to help you, we will work together on a plan, which you will own and be given a copy of.

Where else do we provide the service?

We also provide child and adolescent mental health services across Halton, Knowsley, Warrington and Wigan.

Practical information

Our St Helens CAMHS Community Team is based at Birch Unit at Peasley Cross Hospital. Peasley Cross Hospital has free parking for staff and visitors.

As with the rest of our buildings, Birch Unit is smokefree. This means that smoking is not permitted anywhere inside the building or in the site grounds. For more information on this, please visit the smokefree page on our website.