NHS Islington...

Your local NHS

Child and Family Consultation Service

Who are we?

The Child and Family Consultation Service (CFCS) is a team of child and adolescent psychiatrists, psychotherapists, clinical psychologists, social workers, educational therapists and family therapists.

Who is the service for?

The service is for children and families living in Islington. The child needs to have mental health difficulties that fulfil the following criteria:

1. Disorder: The problem should be a disorder rather than distress to a specific situation, unless the distress is having a major impact on the child’s ability to take part in normal aspects of life or has an impact on their development. 2. Severity: The problem is having a major impact on school life and home life.
3. Complexity: The child will have a range of difficulties rather than a single problem.

How can we help you?

Parents and carers often worry about their children. Sometimes these worries can be more severe and may be more than the usual problems of growing up. For example, all families argue a bit, but sometimes parents and children find that they are arguing all of the time. All children feel fed up sometimes, but some seem to be unhappy all of the time and unable to lead a full and active life.

If the problem is complicated or severe, or it has been going on for a long time, it can help to talk about it with someone outside of the family. Our team has a range of skills to help you to sort out the problem.

How can you get to see us?

If you are worried about your child, you should discuss your concerns with your GP, social worker, or other healthcare professional, and they will refer you to our service. We give all referrals a priority category and will see you as soon as we can.

We prioritise young people with severe difficulties such as risk of self-harm and serious mental illness and will offer an appointment within 2 weeks. We have a specialist team for children with Neuro-Developmental problems such as ADHD or Autism. We also see children with a range of emotional and behavioural difficulties. We aim to see these children within 12 weeks.

Please remember we are not an emergency service. If you need to be seen immediately you should go to your local Accident & Emergency department or contact your local Social Services office.

How do we work?

We offer families 5 weekly appointments to talk about your difficulties. We like to meet with key members of the family to talk about the problem. The aim of these meetings is for everyone to understand the problem and decide how things can change. Meetings generally last an hour.

Most families find they need several meetings to try out new approaches to the problem. The meetings might be with the child or young person on their own, with their parents or with the whole family. If we meet the child on their own, we also continue to meet with their parents.

After this time we will review your needs with you and discuss your options. If we agree our service is not the right one to help you, we will give you information about a more suitable one.

Confidentiality

Anything you tell us is private and confidential, and we will treat it as such. If we think it helpful to talk to your child’s teacher, for example, we will always ask your permission first. If we are very worried about your safety or the safety of other people, we may think it a good idea to talk to someone else who might be able to help. We will always discuss this with you first.