Speakers

The M Word is currently the only independent Community Interest Company that provides a one stop shop in providing assessments and reports, but also support for the young person, as well as the family through our sister company Emotional Problem Solving Limited. This is because our founder and Director of both companies, Lavinia Dowling, recognised there was a shortfall in the CAMHS service where she was working at the time as a Mental Health Nurse. Over half of daily triage referrals across CAMHS present with traits of Autism, but, because anxiety and low mood is associated with school, CAMHS are unable to accept these clients even though they may be seriously anxious and/or depressed. The expectation from CAMHS is that if school have caused the issues, then school should not expect CAMHS to try and fix, but rather school should find the cause and provide the solution. Naturally, schools are not trained as Mental Health practitioners and are dependent upon basic training (e.g. Mental Health First Aid) and CAMHS support within schools (invariably one day or two a month and not face to face). The other difficulty compounding the issue for schools is there are insufficient resources to screen and assess on site learning difficulties, and lengthy waiting lists with CAMHS across the UK (sometimes up to 5 years) for referrals to neuro pathways due to insufficient resources. The systems are failing one another.

Lavinia has nearly three decades of clinical experience as a Mental Health Nurse having worked, unusually, in every field of mental health. She has worked as a specialist with military personnel as well as CAMHS. Unfortunately, CAMHS do not commission services geared for the Autistic community and services are so stretched that young people very often suffer for years deteriorating in their mental health before anything is deemed as necessary. Lavinia is known for being swift and accurate in her assessments and wishes to “cut to the chase” in identifying the issues and finding solutions across the board with supporting the young person, families and professionals in supporting the young person to ensure some form of education continues. She refers often to Prof Peter Jarvis who stated that ‘learning is a lifelong activity’, and recognises herself as we go through life developing, we are forever learning.