Assessments for children with emotional health difficulties

School Nurses have additional training and experience of working with children and young people and assessing difficulties with emotional health and/or behaviour.

When you contact our service or a professional refers your child to us then we will offer a range of options to support you. We have a pathway approach to support children and their parents. This means that we listen to what the problem is that you or your child is experiencing and explore what you might have already tried to improve the problem. We will then advice your of the best options to try and help support you and your child

• The first part of our pathway is to parent/carers to attend our workshops where we can explain more about children’s behaviour and emotions, offer support and top tips for strategies to try at home and/or sign post you other services or organisations that might be able to help
• If you have already attended a workshop then we might suggest that your child attends one of intervention groups such as building resilience or anger management. In addition, we will ask parents/carers to consider attending one of our parenting groups. It is not unusual for parents/carers to be worried about attending these groups however lots of parents/carers who have attended tell us that the groups were really useful and that they felt supported by other parents who were experiencing similar issues and that the staff running the group were also very supportive
• If a child or young person is still experiencing problems after accessing these interventions then we will invite the parent/carer to bring their child to a health review. The School Nurse can commence an assessment of their child’s needs. We work closely with other health colleagues in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), Community Paediatricians and Therapies and we may refer a child or young person to one of these services.