Referrals

Referrals to the county-wide Link teams can come from any professional working with a young person with ‘complex needs’ who feels that existing provision is not meeting such need and is unsure how to proceed.

These may be practitioners working in:

• Children’s social care
• CAMHS, community nursing and paediatric teams
• A wide range of education services
• Youth Justice teams and the police
• The voluntary and community sector (VCS).

Initial discussions

Professionals who are uncertain how to proceed in complex cases are always welcome to contact us for an initial discussion regarding possible input from our Link teams. It is not necessary to complete a referral form for an initial discussion.

Following an initial discussion, there will be agreement about whether further Link team involvement is required and what form that may take.

The teams seek to be as accessible as is possible for initial advisory discussion and can be contacted as below:

Referral guidelines

Our broad referral guidelines are in line with the ‘Framework for Integrated Care for the Community ’ but if referrers are uncertain about whether a child’s situation warrants a referral, they are welcome to get in touch to discuss further.

The guidelines are as follows:

Referrals will be considered for children/young people aged 0-18 years:

• Who meet the broad complex needs criteria outlined in the ‘Framework for Integrated Care,’ namely their difficulties are:
  • Multiple (ie not just in one domain, such as mental and physical health)
  • Persistent (ie long term rather than transient, including for example learning disability, autism or both)
  • Severe (ie not responding to standard ‘clinical’ interventions)
  • Framed by family and social contexts (such as: early family disruption, loss, inequality, prevalence of Adverse Childhood Experiences)
• Where there are significant concerns about ongoing emotional, mental health or neurodevelopmental difficulties which cannot/are not being addressed by existing provision
• In addition there may be:
  • lack of a clear formulation of the child/young person’s situation and it is felt that this would be of value
  • systemic blockage or failure of a plan to progress because of cross-agency disagreement
• There is no automatic reason why a child placed out of area should not be referred
• Referrals can be accepted from individual practitioners or from a cross-agency group working with a child/young person.