Unfortunately, we are not able to provide an emergency service.

If your child needs urgent help, please make an emergency appointment with your G.P., call 111, or call 999.

The Hampshire CAMHS website has some good advice and sources of support for children and young people who are experiencing a crisis: https://hampshirecamhs.nhs.uk/help-im-in-crisis

As Clinical Psychologists, we are trained to work with people of all ages and ability, and can use a wide-range of assessments and evidence-based treatments. You can find out more about us and what we do here, here and here.

Appointments usually take place in our offices:

The Whitehouse at the Southampton Outdoor Sports Centre, which is in Bassett, Southampton.

Basingstoke at The Treatment Hub

You can find directions here.

Your Psychologist will let you know which of our offices they are working from.

We also offer appointments remotely via apps such as Zoom and Skype.

Please note: We are no longer meeting with families at Woodmill due to circumstances beyond our control.

Neurodevelopmental Assessments:

Our Autism Assessment and AD/HD Assessment Services waiting times are both approximately a couple of months. You can contact us to find exact waiting times.

Therapeutic services:

We do have a waiting list for our therapeutic services. You can contact us to find out the current waiting time.

Whilst there is a wait for an initial assessment appointment for therapy, there are no further waiting times between these first appointments and any subsequent treatment sessions in our therapeutic service: i.e. once you have had an initial assessment, if we all agree that further sessions with us would be likely to be helpful, there is no further wait for those sessions. You would meet the same Psychologist you saw during the initial assessment for therapy sessions; and these appointments would usually start as soon after the initial session as you can both schedule (often the following week).

No, you don’t need a referral for your child to make an appointment with us. You can self-refer to our service.

Please note: If you are claiming costs through your insurance - some Health Insurance Providers may require your child to see their G.P. or a Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist to authorise funding for sessions with us. Your Health Insurance Provider will be happy to tell you if this is the case for your child.

Yes. We have a specialist Autism Assessment Service for children and young people aged 3 - 17.

The members of our team in this part of the service have many years of experience in conducting specialist assessments of Autism Spectrum Conditions. Our assessments for ASC are conducted in-line with best practice guidance, and to the best of our knowledge, fulfil the current criteria for these assessments set out by our local NHS CAMHS teams.

You can find out more about this service here.

Unfortunately we are not able to offer assessments for PDA. While we do recognise that some children fit with this profile and respond better to strategies associated with this, we are only able to offer assessments and make recommendations around the presence or absence of autism.

We do know that there are some practitioners out there who do take more of focussed approach to PDA assessment, howeverwe do not have any specific details we can pass on.

Autism Hampshire may be able to offer some more advice, or you could contact the Elizabeth Newson centre (www.autismeastmidlands.org.uk). They are in the east midlands but they are a centre for excellence in PDA and may have a list of clinicians who offer these assessments.

Yes we do. We can provide diagnostic assessments for AD/HD. These assessments are in-line with best practice, and to the best of our knowledge, fulfil the current criteria for these assessments set out by our local NHS CAMHS teams. This service is for children and young people aged 6 - 17 years.

Please see our page about this service (here) or contact us for more information.

Please note that this is a diagnostic assessment service and we are not able to prescribe medication should the threshold for diagnosis be reached.

Yes. We are bound by confidentiality. The only people who would need to receive information routinely would be a referring professional such as a Doctor or Social Worker (this does not apply if you self-refer). If we think it would be helpful for others to know some information, for example a child’s school, we would discuss this fully with the you and your child, and obtain permission to share the information. We do not divulge any information to anyone, including referrers, without prior permission. Any reports we write are shared with the family first and only sent to others with permission.

As with all professionals, the only exception is in the rare circumstances when we are told that a child or person is at risk to themselves or others; if we are told that a child is being / has been harmed; or if we are told about a crime that has been committed. Should this happen, we would inform you/your child that we would need to share some information, be clear about what information needs to be shared & with whom, and explain our reasons why this information needs to be shared.

To enable us to see as many families as possible, home visits are not offered routinely but can sometimes be offered under exceptional circumstances, and if we have capacity.

At the present time, we are not offering home visits. We can however, see families via Zoom or Skype if they cannot travel to our office.

We do have two fully accessible therapy rooms, with wheelchair access.

Some of our therapy rooms are only accessible by stairs. As such, if you have needs associated with mobility that means that our therapy rooms on the first floor are not appropriate, please let us know at the earliest opportunity so that one of our accessible rooms can be booked for your appointments.

Yes. We are very happy to work with a child’s school or other professionals involved in their life, where families would like us to.

We would always discuss the scope of work with the school and any costs that would be incurred prior to starting.

Yes. Whilst we have specialised in child & adolescent mental health, we are trained to work with people across the lifespan.

We recognise that a number of young people and families will want to continue to work with us after their 18th birthday.

We can continue to work with you / your child for as long as it is helpful.

We tend not to start working with people who are already over 18.

Yes. When appropriate, we can offer consultations remotely by apps such as Zoom & Teams; or by telephone or email. In rare instances we may be able to offer home visits, but this will depend on eth capacity within our service as a whole.

Yes. We have a number of appointments that fall outside of school hours. As you may imagine, these are extremely popular, so cannot be guaranteed.

We actively try to minimise disruption to school and do our best to find times that are convenient for the families who come to work with us.

Yes.

We sometimes find that children and young people are reluctant to meet with a professional.

We can work with families where their children are not present.

We also think together about how your child might come round to seeing that working with us could be helpful to them.

Yes we are open all year round, with the exception of bank holidays.

As with all other services, our team sometimes take Annual Leave and this may coincide with school holidays. If your Psychologist is due to take annual leave, they will discuss this with you in advance and help make plans for the way forward in their absence.

Yes. We are very happy to work alongside colleagues in CAMHS. We would need CAMHS to be happy with this arrangement, and your permission for us to talk to them on an ongoing basis, to ensure that we have a joined-up approach to your child's care.

No. We cannot prescribe medication. Prescriptions are usually provided by Psychiatrists or Nurse Prescribers, either within NHS CAMHS, or independently.

Some G.P.s may prescribe medication for children and young people.

Yes.

For our therapy service, a brief written summary of the initial assessment session can be made available upon request at no extra charge (when requested within 2 weeks of the appointment having taken place). All other written reports are costed at our rate for clinical time. Your Psychologist would explain the costs in advance of any work being carried out.

Our neurodevelopmental (Autism & AD/HD) and cognitive assessments come with comprehensive reports as part of the service; and are included in the price.

We can provide reports for parents, school and others.

Details of our charges are within our terms and conditions, available from hello@weareforwardthinking.co.uk

Please contact us if you would like more details of the reports we offer and the costs.

We are Registered Practitioner Psychologists with the HCPC. The HCPC acts as the governing body for all Practitioner Psychologists, including Clinical Psychologists. The HCPC sets standards for training, qualifications and post-qualification development that must be adhered to in order to be registered.

No. We are Clinical Psychologists. We can help think about mental health / behavioural / developmental concerns in school. If your child's difficulties are more about accessing learning/the curriculum; or needing an assessment for an Educational Tribunal, we would suggest seeing an Educational Psychologist.

No. We are unable to provide medico-legal assessments.

You may be able to find Psychologists who specialise in these areas here: https://www.achippp.org.uk/directory or on the British Psychological Society site: https://www.bps.org.uk/lists/DIR All Practitioner Psychologists need to be Registered with the HCPC, who are their regulatory body. It is essential to check someone is registered prior to working with them. You can check to see if a practitioner is registered here (search under "practitioner psychologist"): https://hcpc-uk.org/check-the-register/

No. We are unable to offer an assessments around 'parental alienation' and cannot provide medico-legal assessments.

You may be able to find Psychologists who specialise in these areas here: https://www.achippp.org.uk/directory or on the British Psychological Society site: https://www.bps.org.uk/lists/DIR All Practitioner Psychologists need to be Registered with the HCPC, who are their regulatory body. It is essential to check someone is registered prior to working with them. You can check to see if a practitioner is registered here (search under "practitioner psychologist"): https://hcpc-uk.org/check-the-register/

Our previous website is still accessible, but is no longer updated.

This is the site for the most up-to-date information about our practice.

We should still receive messages sent to our previous email address, but it is best to send them to hello@weareforwardthinking.co.uk as this address is checked more frequently.