Assessments, appointments and accessing CYPMHS
We aim to make our service accessible to all families. It would be helpful if you can let us know of any additional needs your family may have, such as disabled access requirements, language needs, reading, hearing support or communication needs. This information helps us better support you to attend your appointment.
Note: Leeds CYPMHS crisis call line is available to all children and young people living in Leeds who are concerned about keeping themselves safe. The call line is also available to parents, carers and professionals who are concerned about a child or young person.
You can contact the call line about yourself, a child or young person whether they are accessing our other services or not.
What to expect
If you're unsure what to expect from your appointments, please see information below. You can contact the team you will be seeing direct if you have any questions that are not answered here.
All children, young people and families that come to Leeds CYPMHS are required to have a risk assessment.
A risk assessment is a helpful tool for children, young people, families and staff to identify areas which may require some additional support.
In Leeds CYPMHS, a risk assessment is talked about in your first appointment. Our clinician may ask some specific questions so they can understand if there are any concerns that you may need help with. The questions they ask may include “Do you have thoughts of self-harm or suicide?” or “Are you aggressive towards other people?” They may also ask your parents or carers questions. Be as honest as you can. We’re not here to judge you, we are here to help you.
The answers you give may lead to the CYPMHS clinician suggesting that others need to be involved in your care. This may be a CYPMHS Doctor or someone else such as a teacher at school.
If there are risks that you need help with, then together we will complete a plan called an ‘Our Plan’. This will give helpful hints and tips on how best to manage your worries and provide you with contact numbers or web pages for other services that can help.
If you need more help from CYPMHS, we will plan together a package of care to suit you. Because we fit it around what you need, there is no one next step, but you will get a say in deciding what comes next.
Your clinician will talk through the options with you and what they think will work best for you.
Specialist assessment: Examples of some of the specialist assessments we carry out are assessments for ADHD, eating disorders and Autistic Spectrum Conditions (ASC). You can find out more about autism and ADHD support for children and young people in Leeds at our neurodiversity information hub: MindMate neurodiversity information hub
Therapy: Examples of some of the specialist therapies we offer are cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), family therapy and creative therapies. More information can be found on our homepage under Therapy team.
Our service also includes a specialist team for children with learning disabilities and their families. For more information, visit our Leaning Disability team.
As part of your care within our service, we may ask you to complete a range of questionnaires and we will seek feedback from you at various times about your care and our services.
Some of the questionnaires are important to help us work out if the care we are providing is helping you.
Some of the questionnaires help us work out where we can improve.
Your feedback, good or bad, is important as it helps us work out where we are getting things right, and where we could be better.
Each missed appointment costs the NHS money and is lost time where another child or young person could have been seen.
Sometimes missed appointments can’t be avoided, but if you know in advance that you will be unable to attend a scheduled appointment, we ask that you try to give us as much notice as possible so we can offer the space to someone else.
If you need to rearrange a booked appointment, please contact the team you are working with direct.
