Darwin Centre

Details

Phone Number

01782 427650

Service Hours

24 hours a day, 7 days a week

Out of Hours Contact Number

N/A

About the service

The Darwin Centre is a 14-bed regional general adolescent unit for young people aged 12 to 18 years old (up to 18^th birthday) who have a variety of mental health and emotional difficulties that requires an inpatient admission and cannot be safely managed in the community.

The Darwin Centre staff have a mixture of qualified and unqualified staff making a multi-disciplinary team approach in the care of the children and young people admitted to the Darwin Centre. Each staff member has the skills and experiences in caring for a variety of complex presentations such as:

low mood/anxiety/depression/low self-esteem
self-harm and suicidal ideations
eating difficulties, including eating disorders and disordered eating
trauma and difficulties in managing emotions and/or life events
neurodiversity/social and communication difficulties
psychosis

Referrals

The Darwin Centre works very closely with Toucan, the West Midlands CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) Provider Collaborative. Toucan completes the gatekeeping and the bed management side of referrals for admissions into tier 4 provisions for all children and young people living within the West Midlands area.

The referring teams need to complete a Form 1, requesting an admission for a young person with all relevant information, which must then be sent directly to the West Midlands Bed Hub.

There are two types of admissions to the Darwin Centre; informal and detained:

Informal: where a young person agrees to admission and gives consent to stay and accept assessment and care
Mental Health Act Section (being detained): the use of a legal framework where a young person does not consent to admission, but a Mental Health Act assessment has been completed, recommending this is in the best interest of the child. Young people may be detained on Section 2 (28 days for assessment) or Section 3 (up to 6 months for treatment). Young people detained will need a section 17 to go on any leave.

Throughout the admission, discharge planning will take place and include the young person’s local community teams, local home support teams the young person and their families to ensure there is a smooth transition back to the community setting where ongoing support may need to continue.

On discharge, you may be followed up in the community by one of our other services such as: