We have reached our first birthday and it feels good! This time last year we were frantically putting the finishing touches not only to the initial four blogs but to the website itself to make sure it looked the part as well as read the part. We were all new to this type of project and it was a bit of a leap of faith. How would it land and where would it take us? We didn’t really know but we wanted to find out.

What we did know is that we had set out on this journey with the intention of creating ‘a forum for us to examine, celebrate and contest what motivates us and what holds us back in the work we do … [It was to be a] place where we can connect with our professional standards, with new ideas, and with each other in all our humanity and diversity … The Critical AMHP seeks to capture and learn from multiple, diverse voices’. A lofty aim perhaps, so now seems as good a time as any, at this first anniversary, to reflect on whether or not we have met this goal, whether we can go further and to think about new areas for these reflections.

When I receive a request to undertake an assessment on a child, the first thing I do is mentally run through the list of available Section 12 CAMHS doctors and start dialling them almost immediately (as the list is fairly short, it’s a pretty straightforward task!). Am I embracing this task with such enthusiasm because the Code of Practice says that I should?  I can tell myself this (and others if they ask) but the truth of the matter is that assessing children and young people is often filled with so much complexity, dilemma, resource battles and uncertainty that I am filled with the overwhelming desire to have the “right people” at the “right time” in the “right place”. A task that is so much easier said than done.