A Centre for Change
Collingham Child and Family Centre operates a Monday to Friday day patient and inpatient treatment programme for pre-adolescent children who have severe and complex mental health problems.
Admission to Collingham Child and Family Centre may occur for three main reasons:
- The child’s condition is deteriorating or failing to improve significantly despite appropriate outpatient management.
- There is a need for intensive nursing observation and care.
- Multiple assessment and treatment interventions are required in parallel.
Admissions in general are planned. However, we aim to respond promptly to emergency requests for admission.
A multi-disciplinary approach to assessment and treatment is central to the unit’s ethos.
The staff team includes: Psychiatrists, Mental Health and Paediatric Nurses, Childworkers, Teachers, Family Therapists, Clinical Psychologists, Social Workers, an Occupational Therapist, a Speech and Language Therapist, together with managerial and administrative staff.
Education is provided on site by the Chelsea Children’s Hospital School. In addition we have close links with the paediatric and paediatric neurology departments at the nearby Chelsea & Westminster Hospital.
How to make a referral to the unit
Referrals to our service are accepted from community-based child and family mental health teams. This can be done either in writing or via telephone discussion with a member of the referral team.
After an initial discussion, if we feel that it would be appropriate to consider our involvement in the case, we will ask you to co-ordinate a meeting locally with the referral network. This will include the child’s family or carers and a representative from the child’s school as a minimum. It is important that the educational psychologist and educational placements officer attend if there are questions about future school placement, and Social Services if there are child protection or family support issues.
The purpose of this meeting is to gain a shared understanding about the concerns; to clarify the tasks for admission and to explore the possibility of further community based intervention as an alternative to admission wherever possible. If a clear task for the unit is identified the family will then be offered an opportunity to visit Collingham Child and Family Centre.
The Visit
The family and child are offered a guided tour of the unit and will then meet with members of the multidisciplinary team (usually with the use of a video camera and sound link to facilitate team thinking and planning). We will clarify the goals for admission and the process in which we will work together.
The decision to go ahead with an admission usually rests at this point with the child’s carers.
Admission
The first six to eight weeks of an admission are predominately an assessment phase. There is the possibility of extending the placement for a further two months when a treatment phase is indicated.
A multidisciplinary care plan is provided for each child and family attending the unit.
Families bring children to the unit at 9am on Monday mornings and collect them on Friday at 3pm. Children coming to the unit on a day patient basis attend between 9am-5pm daily.
Each family will have a regular weekly family meeting that has a systemic family therapy orientation. We work in partnership with families to reach identified goals for change and the work is often challenging.
We also expect the parents to attend a parents’ support group, which takes place on Monday mornings between 9.30-10.30am.
Children join one of three age groups for the core part of the daily unit programme: 5 to 8 years, 8 to 10 years and 10-12 years.
As an integral part of our service the Chelsea Children’s Hospital School offers full access to the National Curriculum. Each group has a teacher and members of the nursing team allocated to it. The teaching staff liaise with the child’s school and Educational Department prior to and during admission.
Multidisciplinary focus teams review progress of work with each child and family on a weekly basis.
Assessment and Treatment Options
We aim to provide a broad-based assessment to inform treatment interventions. This will be multi-modal and drawn from a wide range of options, some of which are:
Parent and Family Work
We endeavour to maintain close liaison with professionals involved in the referral and community-based network both during and at the end of a child’s placement. We will liaise through a review meeting, which occurs about halfway through a child’s placement and at a discharge meeting at the end of a child’s placement. At the meetings our recommendations can be consolidated in a co-ordinated discharge plan to the community.
A discharge summary will be sent to the referrer and family doctor at the end of each child and family’s placement.