MHST Art Therapist

An exciting opportunity to join a growing Arts Therapies workforce within the Lambeth Mental Health Support in Schools Team (MHST). You will hold your own individual art therapy caseload, as well as supporting the development and facilitation of arts-based workshops and groups within educational settings. This post may be suitable for a newly qualified Art Therapist.

The MHSTs are a new service designed to help meet the mental health needs of children and young people in education settings. They are made up of senior clinicians, CAMHS Practitioners and EMHPs or also known in SLaM as Education Wellbeing Practitioners (EWPs) . They will be based across education settings as an additional resource within a whole-system approach to promote resilience and wellbeing, support earlier intervention, enable appropriate signposting and deliver evidence-based support, care and interventions. The MHSTs will partner with their education settings to design a bespoke offer, based on the school's individual needs and will work with the mental health services that are already in place, such as counselling, educational psychology, school nurses, pastoral care, educational welfare officers, VCSEs, the local authority, including children's social care, and NHS Children and Young People Mental Health Services (CYPMHS).

Main duties of the job

To enhance accessibility to mental health services for children and young people in schools.

To collaborate with the Schools Mental Health Leads to support early identification of developmental, emotional and mental health difficulties in children and young people living or being educated in Lambeth.

To work jointly with providers to increase their capacity to intervene following early identification through the delivery of brief evidence-based interventions and through liaison, consultation, training and joint working across services.

To be part of a multi-agency training team for schools.

To function as a specialist in art therapy principles and practice for the MHST and their networks.

To review applications to the MHST team and where required to facilitate appropriate step- up referrals to specialist CAMHS and/or access to other relevant agencies according to the level of need.

To collaboratively develop and embed the MHST programme in schools.

To contribute to enabling other staff, service users and carers from diverse backgrounds to flourish by working to create a psychologically safe environment.

South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM) provide the widest range of NHS mental health services in the UK as well as substance misuse services for people who are addicted to drugs and alcohol. We work closely with the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), King's College London and are part of King's Health Partners Academic Health Sciences Centre. Our scope is unique because it is built on three major foundations: care and treatment, science and research, and training.

SLaM employ around 5000 staff, have a budget of around £381 million, and serve a local population of 1.1 million people. We have more than 230 services including inpatient wards, outpatient and community services.