Care Opinion

A difficult journey to go through as a parent.

Posted By saturnmy48

"A difficult journey to go through as a parent."

About: Community Mental Health Services / CAMHS (Child & Adolescent MH service) Stirling

(as a parent/guardian),

My daughter went to CAMHS as an urgent referral into the ICAMHS team due to significant weight loss just after the new year there. As a mother I have never felt so helpless and found the clinician Charlene  and Team Lead Emma to be extremely helpful and supportive. Over the past 6 months my daughter has had various appointments with the nursing team, Angela and others, and has been diagnosed with Autism which has impacted on her ability to eat and drink. Angela put my daughter at ease with her good humour and banter and explained to us as parents what autism is and the impact it has on our daughter. 

The team have now discharged my daughter and I now have a plan of what to I can do to support my daughter. 

Difficult journey to go through as a parent.  My daughter had the option of going to another health board which she did not choose and the team have been great at putting in procedures to keep me safe and my daughter. I have felt supported in my workplace and have attended counselling to get me through his difficult journey.

I can't thank the CAMHS team enough for all their support. 

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Responses

Response from Lesley Dunabie, Department Manager, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Centre, NHS Forth Valley about a year and a half ago
Lesley Dunabie
Department Manager, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Centre,
NHS Forth Valley

Submitted on 24/08/2023 at 14:28
Published on Care Opinion at 15:52

Dear Saturnmy48

Thank you very much for taking the time to provide a written response regarding your experience of Forth Valley CAMHS. All feedback is incredibly important to us and helps us change, adapt and improve our service provision.

I can only imagine how stressful this journey was for you and your family, it sounds like your daughter was very unwell at one point. I am delighted to hear your daughters health has improved and has been discharged! Thank you for sharing the positive experience you have had with icamhs and our nursing staff/mental health practitioners. The team work tirelessly to engage with families and children and are always open to exploring new ways of working and considering differential diagnosis to understand the difficulties children and young people present with. Charlene, Emma and Angela are absolutely amazing clinicians and do all they can to try to make our service as accessible as possible.

Thank you once more for your feedback - I will ensure this is shared with our whole team and our managers.

Best wishes

Lesley Dunabie

Department Manager/Head of Nursing for CAMHS

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