Unfortunately, at this time, our waiting times for initial assessment with our service are significantly delayed. You will be contacted by telephone or letter when your child has been booked an appointment.
If at any point during your wait time you feel your child no longer requires an assessment or you seek a private assessment; we request you inform us as soon as possible.
The service can arrange for a professional interpreter to join the appointments. We need this person to be booked by our service rather than a family member interpreting.
The majority of our questionnaires are available to access on our website under “Questionnaire links for children open to the service”. These are available to use for both schools and parent/guardians.
If questionnaires have been requested you/your child’s school urgently; you can access these and send them back to us yourself to the following email address: kentchft.qscommpaed@nhs.net.
Once your child is coming up to being due for an appointment, questionnaires will be sent out directly from our service to yourself and school, if this has been requested by the clinician.
Please be aware that the information on many of these questionnaires can be used up to 6 to 12 months after being received. Therefore, an appointment may not be made immediately once these have been returned. Some of our questionnaires are essential for screening and an appointment is not always required upon receipt of these. This should be explained to you at your appointment about next steps.
Even though the questionnaires may not expire for some time, it is still essential that this information is received by the deadlines provided so we can offer an appointment as soon as we are able too.
If your child has changed school or you have changed email address, it is essential that you inform us as soon as possible to avoid delay when up to date questionnaires need to be requested.
We run clinics in the mornings and afternoons. All clinics finish at 4pm. However we do run Saturday clinics but these have limited availability.
We kindly ask that you try to give us at least 48 working hours although this may not always be possible, this helps us to appoint another child and helps to keep our waiting lists down. Please be aware that after cancelling an appointment, there may be a significant wait for another, this is due to lack of capacity and extensive waiting lists. If two appointments are cancelled in a row this may result is a discharge from the service.
The turnaround for all medical reports at this time are between 8 to 12 weeks. If you do need your medical report urgently, please inform the clinician at your appointment with reason as to why this is required.
After an initial diagnosis you will be invited to attend a parent strategy group (parents only) where advice and support will be given. You will have to attend this before any medication can be considered.
Your medical report will be sent to your doctor (GP) who will continue to prescribe the medication under a shared care agreement. Your child will be reviewed by the community paediatrician every three / six / nine months. If there are concerns with the medication you will be asked to see a paediatrician earlier for a possible medication change, but it will be your doctor who will continue to prescribe.
If you child has not been referred to the Community Paediatric Service then you will need to speak to your doctor or preferably your child’s school to be referred.
If you are worried/concerned about a prescription, medication or your child’s medical report, please call 0300 123 4087 and come through to Medical Admin Team or email kentchft.cpmedicaladmin@nhs.net.
Please note we are not an emergency service and have a 72 hour turn around time to respond to all calls and emails. If you and your family need urgent medical attention then you should call 999 or visit A&E immediately.
This is not a reason to see a paediatrician; it is a reason to go to A&E to be seen by CAMHS. If you need immediate help you can you can contact NELFT (CYPMHS Children and Young Peoples Mental Health Service) on 0300 123 4496, 24 hours per day, seven days per week. (Please note that from 6pm on weekdays and 12pm on Saturdays, all calls will be automatically diverted to the NELFT Mental Health Direct support lines which is a team of dedicated professionals waiting to take your call.)
If you are a patient or have been referred you can contact us to request an early appointment, if we have any availability we would request your reasons to expedite an appointment to be sent into us in writing which will be passed to a clinician for their instruction as to what will happen next.
If you child is not diagnosed with anything specific, the clinician will explore other issues to see if there is an underlying problem. You can also look at the links for challenging behaviour on our website POD page or contact Kent County Council on www.kent.gov.uk/earlyhelp for Early Help and Preventative Services. If there is no support or treatment available from our service you will be discharged.
We are predominantly a diagnostic service and therefore once you have a diagnosis you may be discharged if there is no intervention or treatment available.