Supporting Children and Young People Experiencing a Mental Health Crisis - easy read version

Our goals

Our goals are to:

• Say how GIRFEC and mental health supports come together across different services to help with a mental health crisis.

• Support joint working across different services and systems to make support better.

• Help more people to understand how we support Scotland's children and young people when they are having a mental health crisis.

For many support staff this will describe the work they already do. This includes safeguarding, child protection, GIRFEC assessment and planning, and local arrangements.

Good local crisis support should mean all children and young people across Scotland get access to the support they need. This should always be based on GIRFEC.

This will include services that do not normally give crisis support. But they might be the first place a child or young person goes for help. This may include charities, schools, or youth groups.

We also give examples of good work that different services have done when supporting children and young people through a mental health crisis.

This document is a tool for making future guidance. These should mean better crisis support for children, young people and the adults that support them.