Paediatric Psychology for Young People
We are the Paediatric Psychology Service (PPS).
We are a team of Clinical Psychologists and Assistant Psychologists and we help children and young people with health conditions and their families, to cope with and manage their condition and how they are feeling about it.
Our services
Seeing a Clinical Psychologist
A Paediatric Clinical Psychologist is someone who sees children and young people with health conditions and helps them with how they are feeling.
Children and young people see Paediatric Psychologists for lots of different reasons: For example, you may:
- Have been diagnosed with a heath condition
- Be struggling to cope at home or in school
- Be worried about your hospital visits and treatments
- Need help to understand how you are feeling
- Be worried about talking to your friends about your illness
As a service we currently work into a number of targeted areas only.
These include:
- Paediatric diabetes
- Paediatric oncology and chronic haematology conditions
- Paediatric Cystic Fibrosis
- Muscular Dystrophy or other neuromuscular conditions
- Children with an allocated Shropshire Community Children’s Nurse (CCN)
- Children seen by the nurse-led chronic constipation service (Telford and Wrekin only)
- (By negotiation) children requiring preparation for a planned invasive procedure (e.g. surgery) if this has been agreed with the medical consultant
The service is available across the whole of Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin, except for the nurse-led chronic constipation service which is available for children registered with a Telford and Wrekin GP practice.
The psychology input for children and young people with muscular dystrophy or other neuromuscular conditions is based within the Muscle Team at the Robert Jones & Agnes Hunt NHS Hospital Trust (RJAH Muscle Team).
Frequently asked questions
- Who are we?
-
The Paediatric Psychology Service is made up of a group of Clinical Psychologists.
A Clinical Psychologist is someone who has been trained to help people make sense of their health conditions and the difficulties they might experience as a result of them. They can also help you to think about the best way of dealing with your condition/s and how they make you feel.
We often have Trainee Clinical Psychologists on placement with us as part of their training course, so they might work with you too. They are all supervised by a qualified member of staff in the team.
We also have an Assistant Psychologist who has a variety of different roles in the team and helps support families and colleagues, with supervision from qualified psychologists, so you may see her as well.
Our Office Manager is another key member of the team who will be on hand to help you with any questions about arranging appointments and to meet you when you visit the Paediatric Psychology Service for any appointments you may have there.
- What do we do?
-
Lots of children and young people have problems and worries. Seeing a psychologist can help you to solve them or to worry less about them.
We listen to how you are feeling and help you to find different ways of managing your worries about you health condition. We will not make decisions for you, but we will take your difficulties seriously and, where we can, offer some help in dealing with them. You can talk to us about anything and we will keep this private but sometimes we have to tell people about what you said to make sure we are keeping you safe and healthy. We will always talk to you first if we need to do this.
We can see you with or without your parents or carers depending on what works best for you.
- When and why would you see us?
-
If things are getting tricky because of your health or treatment for it, we might be asked to see you by your medical team or one of the nurses. You might also see us at your clinic appointments at the hospital as we are often there.
When we first meet you we might ask you some questions to get to know you better and we might ask about different things that have happened in your life, what things you enjoy doing or anything you are worried about.
After your appointment we will decide together if there is anything we can help you with and if so, make plans for meeting again.
You can talk to us with your mum, dad or grown up, or you can talk to us on your own.
We will usually see you every couple of weeks for about an hour, but this can sometimes change.
Some things we might do together are :
- Creating a mood diary
- Making feelings charts
- Drawing things out
- Talking about what is going on for you
- Developing a plan and setting goals
- Where do we see you?
-
A lot of the time you will come to our building which is in a place called Monkmoor Campus.
But sometimes you can't come to us, so we can come to you. This might be at home, in school, or in hospital.
We can also talk to you on the phone or over video calls, but we will ask what works best for you.
- Services we do NOT offer
-
The Paediatric Psychology Service is not a mental health provision and children with primarily mental health needs are best signposted to the "Bee-U" Emotional Health and Wellbeing Services (formerly CAMHS) rather than this service. Our service is not able to accept referrals for areas other than the targeted teams listed above (see "Our Services").
Where are we?
Contact us
Contact us
Paediatric Psychology Service
Tel: 01743 730138
Professional Lead and Consultant Clinical Psychologist
Dr Camilla Johns
Officer Manager and Team Secretary
Cathy Challenor
shropcom.ppsadmin@nhs.net
Information sharing and confidentiality
The Paediatric Psychology Service (PPS) works closely with other teams and services that look after you so it's really important that we agree how/when we share information with them. We try to ensure that your care plan and individual needs are agreed across teams, so that you don’t get contradictory messages or advice.
We aim to get you and your family's consent to share information, to make sure that you know about what we are sharing, how often, and with whom.
We use a shared electronic record (called RiO) to store all our clinical notes and contacts with you. This means that other professionals in our organisation who are working with you will be able to see these records. However, we have the option to store notes as psychologically "sensitive", meaning that if there is information that you or your parents share with us that you don’t want accessible as above, we can discuss and agree to use this function.
Your records are covered by the Data Protection Act. For more information visit our Managing Information page.
- What kinds of information do we share?
-
- Details about the history & background which provide an overall picture or “map” of the issues
- Details about what issues we are helping with and what we hope to achieve together
- Advice about helpful ways other people can help you, including what choices or approaches might be important to consider
- An outline of what how we understand the most important issues are, including how the difficulties might be related to other areas or factors
- An account of the key difficulties which helps other professionals understand you better, and plan their own input taking this into account
- Ways of making sure your life and responses are taken into account so that we can all understand you and your family better
- Who do we routinely share information with?
-
- Your GP and the person who referred your child to us
- Your child’s paediatric consultant
- Where there is one, the multi-disciplinary team members
- Who Else Might We Share Information With?
-
- Those with Parental Responsibility
- Teachers or school staff
- Other therapists (physiotherapists, speech and language therapists etc.)
- Community Children’s Nurses
- Specialist nurses
- Consultants or key staff at other hospitals
- Other services like the Child & Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) if they are involved
Patient Information
A Young Person's Guide to Paediatric Psychology
A Sibling's Guide to When Your Brother or Sister is Poorly
- Other helpful resources
-
Childline Information and advice on a range of mental health and wellbeing issues, and the opportunity to talk to a counsellor online for free
Young minds Information and advice to understand more about how you are feeling and find ways to feel better
Mind Information and advice on mental health and wellbeing for young people
Kooth A free and annonymous online mental health and wellbeing platform for young people
The Mix A support service for young people under 25. They can help you with however you are feeling and any challenge you might be facing and offer free online counselling
Shout Tips and resources are here to support you when you are feeling anxious, low, stressed or overwhelmed
Anna Freud Strategies to help yourself to manage you mental health and wellbeing
If you have any more questions about confidentiality and how your information is shared then please don’t hesitate to contact us.