Deaf CAMHS
The National Deaf Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (NDCAMHS) provides a specialist mental health service for deaf children with a range of emotional, behavioural and developmental difficulties.
The NDCAMHS team supports children who experience mental health difficulties and are either:
- severely or profoundly deaf
- use British Sign Language (BSL) or Sign Supported English (SSE) as their preferred, first language
- have a significant language impairment related to being moderately or profoundly deaf.
Lincolnshire is covered by the Birmingham NDCAMHS team:
To contact them send an email
Referrals can come from any professional working with the child, young person and family.
This includes schools (both mainstream and deaf), Teachers of the Deaf (ToDs), CAMHS, GPs, paediatricians and other children’s services.
What are the different needs NDCAMHS can support with?
The NDCAMHS team can help if a child or young person is having difficulties that are affecting their life, for example:
- emotional difficulties, such as depression and anxiety
- behavioural difficulties
- trauma and attachment difficulties
- other emotional problems that would typically be seen by a CAMHS team
- they also work with neurodevelopmental conditions, such as autism and ADHD
In addition to this, they will work with local (Lincolnshire) CAMHS services to provide care to children, young people and their families.
What do NDCAMHS offer following accepted referrals?
- assessment of a child’s emotional and developmental needs
- therapeutic support which could include individual work, group work, working with families and medication
- advice and consultation which may include deaf awareness
- advice and consultation for teachers, residential care staff and mental health professionals or any professional involved in the care or support of the young person
Due to the large geographical region covered, the NDCAMHS team mostly support via online platforms such as Teams or Zoom. Contact the Lincolnshire CAMHS services if you would prefer face to face contact.
The NDCAMHS website is a good source of advice and further links for information and support, such as websites, Apps, videos, books and materials supporting deaf identity.
