Complexity in Child Mental Health - Why it’s Everyone’s Business

Join us for this session to mark Children and Young People's Mental Health Week, taking place from 9th – 16th February 2026.

Thinking about complexity in child mental health is important because young people’s issues are rarely isolated. They involve interacting factors like trauma, neurodevelopmental differences, physical health, family stress, and social environments. This creates intertwined problems that require holistic, multi-faceted interventions, to address the true root causes and prevent worsening outcomes and this necessitates strong, collaborate, multi-agency support. This session will explore issues of complexity and highlight where social work is uniquely positioned to work with complexity.

We will have a Q and A discussion after we have heard from each of our speaker.

Speaker Annabel Smith is the Professional Lead for Social Care in a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, and part of the senior leadership team that oversees her NHS Trusts, CAMHS teams including, community teams, inpatient services, crisis work, eating disorders, schools’ mental health teams and primary health care teams. She is also the lead for all of the Trusts social workers and for safeguarding which requires clinical, operational and strategic input. Annabel has worked in CAMHS since 2005 and has established a nationwide CAMHS social work leads network. Annabel is currently undertaking doctoral research into the experiences of social workers within CAMHS

You may find our previous events which focused on the work of CAMHS, of interest. You find links to the recordings and other information related to social work within health centric settings on our Social Work in Health group page https://basw.co.uk/support/groups-and-networks/thematic-groups-england/…?