Senior Mental Health Practitioner

Do you want to make a difference to the mental health of children and young people and shape early intervention services? Gloucestershire Health and Care Trust has three established Young Minds Matter Mental Health Support Teams to work with schools. The aim of the team is to enable earlier and more effective mental health support for children, young people, their families and carers and increase resilience within school communities in managing mental health issues. We are now expanding our team and we are seeking to recruit enthusiastic and committed mental health clinicians who enjoy working within multi agency settings to join the Mental Health Support Teams (MHST's)., The service welcomes those clinicians who may be currently working within other children's or adult mental health settings who have the necessary transferable clinical skills and experience. Key elements of the role are:

• Work in partnership with schools to deliver consultation, assessment of children/young people and a range of mental health interventions within school settings. This will involve direct work with children/young people as well as offering specialist consultation, signposting and advice to professional networks, including teaching staff
• To provide case management supervision to both qualified and trainee EMHPs within the Mental Health Support Team
• Be responsible and ensure the effective care co-ordination, support and advice around clinical care provided within schools, especially including consideration of safeguarding and clinical risk issues
• Consult with teachers and school staff to identify children and young people with emerging mental health needs, as part of a whole school approach. This may include supporting the EMHP's in delivering parenting support, group work and psychoeducation within a school setting
Our service is very proud of the positive impact we make on the children and young people we work with and the encouraging feedback we receive as a service from school staff alongside children and families. We have a strong multi-disciplinary ethos in our clinical delivery and have robust clinical supervision structures.

Band 6 clinicians as Senior Mental Health Practitioners (SMHP) are a vital part of the service. We are seeking people who are flexible, adaptable to change and able to develop service delivery over time and in response to feedback. It is a community-based post and therefore a valid UK driving licence plus the use of own transport for business purposes is essential.

The qualification, training & experience requirements for the role are underlined in the Job Description/Person Specification. We havein excess of 5000 staff working over 50 sites, providing a diverse range of services. We strive to support an organisational culture that is welcoming, builds and celebrates inclusivity and diversity and provides a sense of belonging and trust. The annual NHS Staff Survey gives our people the opportunity to tell us about their experience working at the Trust. For the 2023 survey just over 2800 colleagues gave us their views (58.5%). It was great to see from the results that colleagues are saying that:
• 89.7% believe they are making a positive difference to patients/service users;
• 73.3% would recommend the organisation as a place to work;
• 82.4% agree that care of patients and service users is the organisations priority;
• 76.7% would be happy with the standard of care for a friend or relative
Our results put us as 5th nationally as a Community, Mental Health and Learning Disabilities NHS Employer of Choice and 1st equal amongst all NHS Provider Trusts in the South West. However, we know we have more to do and will continue to drive forward our commitment to making GHC a Great Place to Work.