An Evaluation of a Primary Care‐Based Child Clinical Psychology Service

Abstract

Background: This paper describes a primary care‐based clinical psychology service operating in an inner London borough that provides psychological intervention for children with emotional or behavioural difficulties and their families, and consultation and support to the primary health care teams.Method: A comparison is made with a local secondary level child mental health service in terms of characteristics of referrals and clinical outcome. Referrers’ perceptions of the primary care‐based service are described.Results and Conclusions: The findings demonstrate a useful child and adolescent mental health service for children and adolescents with a broad range of childhood difficulties within a primary care setting, which appears to overcome some of the problems often associated with referral to secondary level services.