Home > Children & Young People > Mental Health >

Asylum & Refugee Clinic (ARC)

Checked: 12-06-2025 by Jenny Henry Next Review: 12-06-2027

Overview

At the Asylum and Refugee Clinic (ARC), we provide essential mental health support for all children and young people who have arrived in the UK, both with families and unaccompanied. We provide mental health support for those who are seeking asylum and have refugee status in Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire (BNSSG).

We are a clinic that specifically works with the emotional impact of post-traumatic stress (PTS). We aim to strengthen children’s and young people’s emotional wellbeing and resilience. To do this, we bring together all the adults around them to understand the impact of PTS and how to best support them.

The support we offer helps children and young people understand and alleviate the distress they are experiencing. We also work with the carers and professionals in their network to have the best understanding of the impacts of PTS.

Services

An initial assessment is offered with the family or network along with the young person. We also, dependant on the age of the child or young person, offer a Young Person’s Voice meeting. Following this, we can then make a treatment plan based on the child or young person’s individual needs.

Treatment plan options are:

CREATE (Create REcovery After Traumatic Experiences) – an 8 session psychoeducational group
CREATE (Create REcovery After Traumatic Experiences) psychoeducational individual sessions.
Trauma focused therapy such as eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR), or children’s accelerated trauma treatment (CATT)
Art Psychotherapy - individual or group sessions
Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy – individual sessions

Consultations and support for carers and professionals

Consultations are available pre-referral and when a child or young person has been accepted, where a professional can request a one-off consultation to discuss whether a young person would be suitable for ARC or if there are other services best placed to support them. A request form is in resources below or see the Consultations section on the ARC website.
CREATE (Create REcovery After Traumatic Experiences) psychoeducational group for carers and professionals

Referral

Services are available to children and young people up to the age of 18 years old in BNSSG who are experiencing clinically significant PTS.

We accept referrals from GPs (within BNSSG), school nurses, social workers or other professionals that are supporting the child or young person.

We always see young people in person, mostly at our clinic in Barton Hill, Bristol (BS5), or another community setting if more accessible.

To make a referral, please use the ARC referral form (also available as EMIS templates in Resource Publisher) and complete the CRIES-13 questionnaire. Copies in other languages are available at Asylum and Refugee Clinic (ARC): Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust

Completed referral forms should be sent to awp.camhsarc@nhs.net

Resources

Specialist Services Consultation Form

Efforts are made to ensure the accuracy and agreement of these guidelines, including any content uploaded, referred to or linked to from the system. However, BNSSG ICB cannot guarantee this. This guidance does not override the individual responsibility of healthcare professionals to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual patient, in consultation with the patient and/or guardian or carer, in accordance with the mental capacity act, and informed by the summary of product characteristics of any drugs they are considering. Practitioners are required to perform their duties in accordance with the law and their regulators and nothing in this guidance should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with compliance with those duties.

Information provided through Remedy is continually updated so please be aware any printed copies may quickly become out of date.