Senior Mental Health and Justice Worker

The POWER project is a multi-skilled team, developing early interventions to prevent the escalation of children and young people's poor emotional wellbeing and mental health needs and reduce the risk of offending, or the need for more specialist services such as Tier 4 inpatient provision. Identifying and introducing supportive measures for young people showing early-stage markers of distress, enabling them to remain in mainstream education and supporting families seeking assistance.

The Mental and Health Justice Senior Practitioner will deliver case supervision and hold a caseload of more complex cases and carry out quality assurance activities and measure outcomes to continue to develop innovative, sustainable methods of intervention, leading to successful long-term strategies.

Mental Health and Justice Workers (POWER practitioners) carry out both 1-1 direct work with children and young people and upskill other professionals to enable capacity building, increased understanding of children and young people's needs, and to implement effective strategies to ensure longer term success., · Responsible for case work supervision across a small team of mental health and justice workers, ensuring adequate resourcing, carrying out enhanced quality assurance and measuring success of interventions through outcomes.

· Responsible for providing a source of specialist advice and professional consultation for Mental Health and Justice Workers, contributing to the development of practice standards.

· Responsible for providing early interventions for more complex cases of children and young people displaying early markers of poor emotional wellbeing and potential mental ill health to prevent escalation to more specialist services. This includes assessment plans, reviews, report writing and signposting for onward referrals.

· Responsible for developing a whole family approach, signposting to relevant agencies and the voluntary sector, enabling parents to seek support for themselves.

· Contribute to identifying unmet need around children and young people's emotional wellbeing and mental health, leading to whole system change. Analyses and assess the effectiveness of key interventions Recording interventions to monitor success of outcomes.

· Responsible for establishing plans which provide sufficient change in young persons' behaviour to enable them to remain in a mainstream educational setting.

· Develop and deliver bespoke upskill programmes across the system, including consultancy, to enable capacity building within educational settings, YJTs, children's social care and pupil referral units.

· Responsible for cultivating innovative ways of working, testing new initiatives, which assist in the development and implementation of protocols.

· Work collaboratively with children's mental health services, Youth Justice Service (YJS), children's social care, adopting a multi-agency approach with Police, Health and others.

· Specific individual and shared targets and objectives are defined annually within the performance management framework.

Post-holders must hold an accredited professional qualification in social work and be registered with Social Work England. Candidates will present evidence of excellent practice, participation in casework, recording and assessment. Strong partnership working is essential for this role as it operates in a multi-agency environment and across 3 local authorities, so the need to be flexible and develop innovative ways of working is key.

The post holder will be an experienced senior social worker and hold a professional qualification in social work with evidence of excellent practice in casework, recording and assessment. Flexibility and ability to build strong partnerships is essential for this role as the role will operate in a multi-agency environment, across 3 local authorities., · Possesses an accredited degree or diploma level, professional qualification in social work.

· Evidence of substantial continuing professional development and expert knowledge in relevant professional area, delivering assurance around practice and participation in casework, recording and supervision.

· Evidence of direct engagement with young people, with successful delivery of 1-1, direct and indirect interventions.

· Proven ability to work within evidence informed framework, with knowledge and understanding of criminogenic factors, causing young people to offend.

· Substantial experience of building strong partnerships, which are collaborative and influential in their nature and engender delivery.

· Deep knowledge and understanding of vulnerability and safeguarding protocols.

· Experience of developing and delivering bespoke training and consultancy.

· Evidence of being a catalyst for change, early in young peoples' lives.

To read more about us please visit: Children & Families

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The role requires you to be mobile throughout a wider operational area including travelling around the county of Essex and beyond, transporting service users and their belongings and to be able to do so in an emergency. Driving licence and car or the ability to meet the mobility requirements of the role through other means is essential.