Learning Disability Service

What we do

BaNES Learning Disability Service offer assessment, advice and, where appropriate, direct support and intervention to children and young people who have:

• an identified emotional or mental health.
• a diagnosed learning disability or significant impairment of intellectual and social adaptive functioning.

Children with learning disabilities often present mental health differently from other children, so we also look at:

• Challenging behaviours of sufficient severity to destabilise home or school, including physical and verbal aggression and self-injurious behaviours.
• Severe disturbance in activity of daily living and / or with relationships with others.

Who are we?

We are a Specialist Learning Disability Clinicians with the CAMHS service. We consist of:

• A Consultant Psychiatrist
• A Learning Disability Nurse Practitioner.

We have a consultant psychologist, but they do not at present work directly with children and families, but offer help and advice to the psychiatrist and learning disability nurse practitioner. We often have trainees that work with us.

As part of the wider CAMHS team we try to support young people with learning disabilities and their families to access specialist CAMHS therapies that might be helpful.

How we help

We offer specialist assessments to help better understand children and young people’s mental health needs.

We work with young people and those caring for and supporting them to plan and provide the care and support that is needed to help with these difficulties.

We monitor and review interventions to ensure they continue to be effective and to meet a young person’s individual needs.

Working with other agencies

Our aim is to ensure that children, young people and families are supported at the right time with the right resource. Our team offers the following to other agencies:

• Consultation
• Advice and support
• Supervision and joint working
• Training