Treatment

All children are assessed before we can offer treatment. This ensures that we offer the most appropriate treatment and in some cases we might refer you to a different service that would be more suited to your child’s needs .

Assessment

When we receive a referral, we will send the family some questionnaires to fill in. This gives us some more information about the nature of the anxieties. When the questionnaires are received back we endeavour to contact the family or the referrer within 2 weeks.

Most families will then be offered an initial assessment at our Clinic or, in some cases, at a Clinic location nearer to home. We conduct a comprehensive assessment of the severity and nature of the anxiety the child is experiencing. This involves both the child and parent being interviewed and completing some more questionnaires. We also request information about any anxiety that the parent experiences, as this helps us know which type of treatment will be most helpful for the child.

Currently, waiting times for an assessment appointment are around 10-12 weeks but we are working to reduce this in the New Year. We endeavour to offer treatment within 8 weeks of assessment.

Treatment

We offer various different treatment programmes, depending on what we judge to be most useful for the family. All of the treatments are based on Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) which is known to be an effective treatment for childhood anxiety. CBT aims to help children change how they think and how they behave in order to help them overcome their anxiety problems. We often suggest working directly with parents/guardians to develop skills and strategies that they can use to help their child. This enables parents to continue helping their child once treatment has finished.

We do not offer counselling. Free local counselling services include Number 5, Reading www.no5.org.uk (to be replaced by Connexions in Feb 2012); ARC in Wokingham www.arcweb.org.uk timetotalk in Newbury www.14-21timetotalk.btck.co.uk. Local branches of "Relate" also offer counselling for young people.

Some of our treatment programmes are being evaluated within treatment trials and most families will be invited to participate in a study. If families choose not to take part in a research project they will still be offered treatment within the clinic