Speakers

Lavinia has nearly three decades of clinical experience as a Mental Health Nurse having worked, unusually, in every field of mental health. She has worked as a specialist with military personnel as well as CAMHS. Unfortunately, CAMHS does not commission services geared for the Autistic community and services are so stretched that young people very often suffer for years deteriorating in their mental health before anything is deemed as necessary. Lavinia is known for being swift and accurate in her assessments and wishes to “cut to the chase” in identifying the issues and finding solutions across the board with supporting the young person, families and professionals in supporting the young person to ensure some form of education continues. She refers often to Prof Peter Jarvis who stated that ‘learning is a lifelong activity’. Unlike most screening agents, Lavinia screens for mental health and for Autism, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA). Most diagnostic screenings will only screen for Autism or ADHD, and not PDA, until it is recognized within health and NICE Guidelines. The difficulty young people have is that they do not understand why they feel different from others, or why they are not deemed as “working hard enough”, or “always getting into trouble”, and so not able to articulate the difficulties. The parents are equally stuck because whilst they see their child deteriorate, their views are not seen as professional and often viewed with suspicion or perceived as poor parenting. Again the policies and procedures fail the system in supporting all in helping the young person acquire an education, and does not consider the long term impact on a young person’s mental health. Whilst school is often fire fighting, as are parents, nobody expects the lengthy and arduous fight to ensure a young person can gain an education.Even more concerning, very few consider the long term impact of poor mental health on a young person in their adult life. Lavinia looks at the past, now, and the future trajectory and is determined that young people are offered timely support, robust assessments, as well as therapeutic support and coaching around mental health and neurodiverse presentations.