Senior Mental Health Practitioner

In this role, you will work closely alongside Advisory Teachers and senior members of the Thought-Full team, as well as with multi-disciplinary teams, outside agencies, clinicians, and other mental health and education professionals, to help develop and deliver the Thought-Full core functions to the schools in your area. You will deliver clinical skills and caseload management supervision to Educational Mental Health Practitioners (EMHP) and Children's Wellbeing Practitioners (CWP), supporting with their training and role modelling best practice. You will also hold a caseload of young people with mild to moderate mental health problems, where you will deliver a variety of brief evidence-based interventions, primarily using a CBT model. You will use your skills and knowledge to provide specialist advice on mental health to ensure services are working closely to meet the needs of young people with a person-centred approach.,

• Clinical work to provide psychological assessment, therapy, advice and consultation, promoting carer involvement and delivering evidence-based interventions.
• Teaching, Training and Supervision to oversee the supervision and development of EMHP's and CWP's and receiving supervision to support with your own Continuous Professional Development.
• Research and Service Evaluation to collect routine outcome data and support the evaluation and development of the service.
• Management and Leadership to work alongside Senior Leadership to support the clinical delivery and oversight of your team and support with more complex clinical issues.
• General role responsibilities to follow codes of conduct, safeguarding, risk assessments, and working with professionals to promote inclusion and recovery., We currently have opportunities for Senior Mental Health Practitioners to make a real difference in supporting Mental Health in Children. You will be working within our Mental Health Support Team (MHST) on exciting new initiatives and an important strand of the Government's 2017 Green Paper 'Transforming Children and Young People's Mental Health Provision'.
We fulfil 3 core functions:
• Supporting the senior mental health lead in each education setting to introduce or develop their whole school or college approach to mental health and emotional wellbeing.
• Delivering evidence-based interventions in education settings (primary and secondary schools and colleges) for mild to moderate mental health issues such as anxiety and depression.
• Giving timely advice to school and college staff, and liaising with external specialist services, to help children and young people to get the right support and stay in education., In your cover letter, outline your motivations for applying and explain how you meet the key skills listed in full and the experience you can bring to the role (please refer to the key skills) ensuring that any gaps in employment are covered in your CV. Please ensure you have saved the job description attached to the main advert on our website as, once the job has closed, you may not have the opportunity to download again.
We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people, and vulnerable adults. This post is subject to an enhanced DBS check, five years referencing, and an occupational health check. West Sussex County Council is an equal opportunities employer committed to promoting an environment that is inclusive and free from all forms of unlawful or unfair discrimination and values the diversity of its people. We actively welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and take every possible step to ensure that no individual will be disadvantaged.

Do you have experience of working with children and young people with mental health difficulties? Have you trained in low or high intensity CBT? Do you enjoy supporting, supervising, and training colleagues?, We are looking for someone who is passionate about supporting the mental health of children and young people and who is self-motivated and organised, as you will need to manage your own workload and that of others. Integrity, openness, emotional resilience and an awareness of yourself and others is vital, as you may be dealing with distressing or emotional circumstances. To apply for this role, you must have a core professional qualification relevant to mental health or CBT experience/qualification. Core profession examples: nursing with specialism in mental health, learning disability nursing, Occupational Therapy, Social Work, or CBT Therapist. As part of this role, you will be required to complete the PGCert Supervision of Therapeutic Practice at the University of Sussex to be able to supervise EMHPs and CWPs employed within MHSTs. Please note:
• There is a regular and intrinsic requirement to communicate in English with members of the public.
• You must be able to travel throughout the county including to locations that are not always accessible by public transport. You will need to be able to travel independently to carry out assessments, and there will be periodic physical requirements to the role.
  
  Our Mental Health Support Team is made up of over 60 professionals, and we are continuing to increase our service to support the growing needs of our communities.
  
  As an employer we recognise that it is our employees that are central to everything we do. We aim to create a supportive and dynamic working environment where employees can achieve their full potential, achieve a healthy work-life balance, and are rewarded for the work they do.