Clinical psychology and audiology

What is a clinical psychologist?

The clinical psychology team who work at Sheffield Children’s Hospital try to help young people and their families in times of emotional difficulty. Our job is to listen to your concerns and try to understand your situation so that we can work together to find a helpful way forward. Clinical psychologists are not medical doctors, so do not prescribe medicines or do any physical examinations.

What can I get help with?

People with hearing loss and tinnitus are often given the chance to see a psychologist for lots of reasons. We can help with things such as:

• Adjusting to a diagnosis of hearing loss
• The effects of hearing loss on the family
• Worries about communicating
• Anxieties, fears, phobias
• Bullying or teasing
• Physical problems made worse by worries
• Traumatic experiences
• Dealing with the future
• Relationships with family and friends
• Worries about feeling ‘different’
• Low mood
• Dealing with uncertainty

All of this work involves working together with your clinical psychologist.

This may may feel a little different to other care in the hospital which involves having things ‘done to you’ because you are also involved in your care.

How long will I be coming?

Your first session will be an assessment. During this we will decide if we need to see you again, and if so, how many sessions are needed for you to make the progress you want.

We provide a session to review how you are progressing and how the sessions have been going. Then if we feel you should have more sessions, we book them in blocks.

Hopefully you will be progressing and not need to see your psychologist any more, but if your need more sessions we can arrange this. We normally plan for between 1 hour and 1 hour 30 minutes for a first session and up to 1 hour for later sessions.

What sort of help will be offered?

This will be tailored to suit your needs. It may be working with your parents, the whole family or with you alone. We also like to take you and your family’s wishes into account. If you are seen alone, we will think together about how to keep your parents informed of your progress without breaking your confidentiality.

The first meeting will be an assessment. During this the aim is to find out a little about you, such as your family and friends, school, and your hobbies. The psychologist will ask about the difficulties you are having as well as finding out about some of your strengths.

You will have the chance to ask questions and get a feel for whether that particular psychologist is the right person to help you. At the end of the assessment we will plan the next steps together.

Will our discussions be confidential?

As clinical psychologists, we have strict rules about confidentiality and do not discuss your difficulties with anyone other than the team who referred you and your GP. In some circumstances it can be helpful to talk about or pass on information to other professionals involved in your care, but we will always ask your permission to do this first. It is important that you know, but, we do have a responsibility to protect children from harm. We are legally and morally bound to disclose any information regarding children who we believe are at risk of abuse or harm to relevant people and services.

Complaints and feedback

If you are unhappy about anything please let us know and we will do our best to put things right. As a service we welcome any suggestions and feedback from parents, carers  children, young people. Your views about what you need are very important to us. Please share them with us rather than go away unhappy with your meeting.

If you are unhappy with the service you have received but do not feel able to talk with us about it, if you prefer you could speak to, Julie Mather, patient advice and liaison services (PALS) co-ordinator. Julie can be contacted on 0114 271 7594 or you can find her by asking at the hospital main reception.

We look forward to meeting you!

If you cannot attend, please let the department know as soon as you can. Even a last minute telephone call on the day would be helpful.

Paediatric Psychology Department
3 Northumberland Road
Sheffield
S10 2TT
Tel: 0114 271 7296