What Nursing Skills Are We Using with Children and Young People Who Experience Mental Health Difficulties?

Abstract

In this chapter, Laurence Baldwin traces the history of nursing in the field of Child and Adolescent Mental Health, as it evolved from an inpatient basis in early child psychiatry units, to become part of the multidisciplinary team. The evolution of this role means it lacks definition, and the move within mental health workforce policy toward a more generic style of worker is seen as a threat to the place of nurses within community teams. The difficulty of articulating what the role is, and what skills nurses bring to helping children and young people with mental health difficulties is examined and some ideas are explored for what are the strengths of CAMH nursing. These strengths and the underlying ways in which nurses think, what they prioritise, and how they enact the therapeutic relationship are seen as being a natural match with what young people say they want from clinicians in CAMHS.