Our aim is to work together with you to ensure your child’s long term future mental health and happiness.

So when we receive your enquiry, the process is as follows:

Initial chat

You will have an initial (free of charge) chat on the phone with our Practice Director, Dr Moss. It is an opportunity for you to express your concerns about your child, tell us what you have tried and who else has been involved that will help us establish what you want to achieve, whether we are able to help you and whether you want to work with us.

Talk through concerns and establish the background to the issue
Is psychiatry the right solution?
Are we the right fit for each other?

The first steps starts with you. We do not judge; we are here to help. If you are concerned about your child’s moods and behaviour, contact us for an initial chat.

GET IN TOUCH

Registration

Once we all agree to go ahead, we will send you a registration form, baseline questionnaires and information about our service. We also ask for information from your GP about your child’s medical background. Working with your GP provides a safe network of care and allows us to explore the possibility that your child may have a medical condition rather than a psychiatric one.

You complete a registration form, providing background information
We add depth to that information by contacting your GP

Initial appointment

The initial appointment takes up to 2 hours which allows us to see you together as a family, then just parents followed by, if appropriate, your child on their own. We focus on:

Current difficulties (how and when they started)
What has and hasn’t helped with these difficulties
The impact on your child’s functioning

We will cover:

Family and medical history
Your child’s developmental history
The significant people in your child’s life (family, friends, school, local community)

Afterwards, we will write to you and your GP summarising what was discussed and our initial thoughts and recommended next steps

If you have been wondering whether ADHD may be an explanation for your child’s difficulties this will be held in mind and explored during this session. A psychiatric assessment is a medical assessment of your child’s difficulties. We assess the nature of all the difficulties your son/daughter is experiencing together with their severity and how they are impacting on daily life. We also consider whether there are additional medical diagnoses which may be present as well as consider all mental health diagnoses e.g. anxiety, OCD and other neurodevelopmental conditions. We therefore complete a full medical assessment rather than solely considering ADHD symptoms and ADHD treatment.

Ongoing care

We don’t have a set number of appointments; everyone is different and we tailor a treatment package to your child.

We follow our unique three step treatment system:

IMMEDIATE – Managing/reducing distress/crisis. Once everyone feels more stable, we can explore the underlying origins of your child’s difficulties.
MID-TERM – Explore the underlying origins with your child and their family; if we need to liaise with other agencies (such as your child’s school) we will gather information from them on the difficulties your child is experiencing.
LONG-TERM – Thinking about the future – putting strategies in place to reduce the chances of this happening again.

We will see you at intervals agreed with you and we always liaise with your child’s school as appropriate, and any other professionals involved in your child’s care to ensure a joined-up approach.

Autism Assessments with Clinical Psychologists

We follow NICE guidance. This outlines that best practise is for a multidisciplinary assessment to take place i.e. for more than one professional from different clinical backgrounds to contribute to the diagnostic process.

We have a close working relationship with Webb-Whitfield Psychology Services, providing joint therapeutic consultant-level neurodevelopmental assessments for children and their families.

Whilst there are some overlaps between psychiatry and psychology, there are significant differences. Psychiatrists, like Dr Julia Moss and her colleagues, are medically trained and have a unique understanding of the relationship between physical and mental health; psychiatrists can also prescribe medication if needed.

Clinical Psychologists, like Dr Charlotte Webb, consider how people think, act, react and interact. They consider behaviour as communication and assess how a person thinks, feels and acts to formulate the best understanding of their struggles, whether this be related to mental health neurodivergence, childhood trauma or family-based difficulties. They are also trained to administer standardised tests which are used as part of neurodevelopmental assessments and part of best practice guidelines.

Working with Dr Charlotte Webb and her colleagues allows us to provide these thorough in-depth assessments, with recommendations personalised for each child. Just as your child is a unique individual, so our assessments reflect that; we don’t have a ‘one size fits all’ approach.

When we have completed our assessment we shall write to you and your GP with a summary of our assessment. We then refer to Dr Webb for the 2^nd part of the assessment process. Her assessment report includes recommendations and resources.

Joint working for interventions

JM Mental Health is a child psychiatric service but we work closely with other colleagues and can refer on to offer a joined up approach utilising other types of interventions. These include:

Other mental health professionals such as clinical psychologists.
Allied health professionals such as occupational therapists, speech and language therapists, creative and equine therapists

If we recommend medication as part of our treatment, we use the following two organisations to ensure excellent customer service:

Choice and Medication – available to all JMMH patients, enabling you to access up-to-date, accurate and reliable information about medication
Pharmacierge: discreetly packaged prescriptions are delivered to your preferred address anywhere in the UK.