Anna Boyd

What I do

I work a split role in Swindon CAMHS – for three days a week I work for the Crisis and Home Treatment Service (CAHTS) part of the service and for 1 day a week I work for the Getting More Help Team.

In the CAHTS team we offer short-term support for 6 – 12 weeks during a period of crisis for a young person.  This could be with the aim of avoiding a hospital admission, or to support the young person after an admission.

We work alongside that young person’s keyworker in CAMHS to provide more intensive and specialist support.  We offer things like coping skills, containment of difficult or stressful situations, family work, parent work, work in response to self-harm or overdose, meal support for young people with eating disorders, psycho-education, emotional literacy work or work in the community.

For the remaining one day a week I work to support the Getting More Help team with a variety of tasks such as Initial Assessments, seven day follow-ups for liaison and running workshops.

Building on my skills

Prior to doing the role I worked as a social worker and gained valuable experience and transferable skills.

I had a career change in my mid-thirties and decided to step away from my role as a Business Development Manager for a training company and do a full-time Psychology Degree.

I then worked as a Healthcare Assistant on a children’s mental health inpatient ward in Oxford before doing my social work post-graduate diploma and moving to work in Swindon.

A positive experience

I have now worked for CAMHS in Swindon for two and a half years and have had a really positive experience.

The job is not always plain sailing – sometimes working with complex young people can feel challenging and nerve-wracking and I’ve also had to have some time off work.

However, the benefits of the role are great and I felt really supported during my period of absence from work, so I feel like I have returned in a much better place.

Great colleagues

I am lucky to have great managers, peers and supervisors and I love seeing young people progress from a period of crisis to a better place in a relatively short period of time.

We all learn from the young people who do not see the outcomes we had hoped for from our interventions, and getting a thank you directly from the young person for the impact you have made is particularly rewarding.

Working arrangements

I work four days a week and one Saturday a month (this is for the CAHTS and I get a day off during the week in lieu of this).  The roster comes out well in advance, so there are opportunities to swap shifts if you need to change a date.

Future opportunities

At the moment I am happy in the role I am in, but I feel like I’m working in an organisation with a strong learning culture which will give me more opportunities to progress and develop when I feel the time for that has come.