Senior Mental Health Practitioner

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Joining #TeamNELFT means you'll become part of a welcoming and supportive working environment. We're CQC rated Good, and we want you to join us on the journey towards an Outstanding rating. NELFT has sites across North East London, Essex, Kent and Medway. We provide community and mental healthcare services to adults and children within these areas.

The Trust has award winning equality and diversity initiatives and staff health and wellbeing activities. We invest heavily in your development, because when you are valued and supported, we provide the best care to our patients. We are a Level 3 Disability Confident Leader, have been featured in the Working Families Top 10 Employers benchmark for three consecutive years, and we have achieved a Carers UK Level 1 Accreditation. Along with our staff networks and training opportunities, we work hard to embed a just and compassionate culture here at NELFT.

Find out more about NELFT careers and what makes our Trust a great place to work, in this video

Job overview

Band 6 - Senior Mental Health Practitioner (Mental Health Support Teams)

Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) are a new government initiative to help increase children and young people's access to support for emotional wellbeing and mental health. MHSTs are part of the national Children and Young People's Increasing Access to Psychological Therapies (CYP-IAPT) programme. MHSTs have three main functions:

To work in collaboration with education staff to develop and implement a Whole School Approach (WSA) to emotional wellbeing and mental health. This includes identifying priorities for WSA and supporting with the delivery of these.

To offer support and guidance to schools, promoting joint working with other services to ensure that children and young people are able to receive the support that they need.

Your role within the service will support the direct delivery of the MHST service in schools as well as supporting junior staff to undertake their roles, part of this is to ensure we can support wellbeing practitioners to maintain registration. Therefore, this role requires candidates to complete the CYP-IAPT Supervisor (low intensity) training or equivalent. Applicants for this post need to be eligible for the course as an essential requirement - please see KCL or UOS websites. .

Please see our Website for examples and explanations of our work.

Kent and Medway Mental Health Support Teams | NELFT NHS Foundation Trust

Main duties of the job

As part of their role the post holders will be responsible for delivering interventions within schools and colleges and hold an individual caseload. The post-holder will ideally have clinical experience working with Children & Young People experiencing emotional wellbeing and mental health difficulties and be expected to deliver CBT interventions for anxiety, low mood, and behavioural problems individually and in groups.

Previous clinical experience will be considered alongside the expectations enlisted in the job description and in support, we provide informal training and wider CPD opportunities as well a robust supervision programme to support development of low intensity CBT skills, intervention adaptation and WSA delivery.

An additional part of this role includes supervisory responsibility of junior colleagues and if not previously completed, the service will support enrolment on a supervisor's course (at one of our affiliated universities). Supervisory training will enhance your skills to support EMHP and CWP junior colleagues to undertake their clinical roles and register with their professional bodies. Within your role you will be offered additional supervision ,which will support your professional development.

The post-holder will be a graduate qualified health care professional (Qualification examples: Nurse, CWP, EMHP, Social Worker, IAPT CBT Therapist or OT). They will also need to have registration or have applied to BABCP or BPS

Working for our organisation

Starting with NELFT

NELFT place a great deal of importance on new starters being properly welcomed and inducted into the Trust. All new starters will join the Trust on the first Monday of each month and will undertake a comprehensive induction of up to two weeks which will include mandatory training, systems training and the allocation of equipment. As part of the process, new starters will have the opportunity to also meet the executive team, senior managers and attend a number of drop-in sessions focussing in engagement, health and wellbeing and key processes. The induction will be held at our head office in CEME Campus, Rainham, Essex, RM13 8EU (please note: in order to travel to this destination you will have to make the Dartford crossing and be aware of the ULEZ charges). Candidates will need to have business insurance when travelling by car to claim both travel and above charges on expenses.

Probationary Period

This post will be subject to a probationary period. Internal applicants are exempt from the probationary period (unless you are an internal applicant currently part way through a probationary period or currently a bank member of staff).

We reserve the right to close this vacancy early should sufficient applications be received.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Skills needed for the post:

• Good knowledge and ability to apply CBT interventions.
• Confident in working alongside both Children/Young people and Education settings.
• Willingness to learn and develop both clinical and supervisor skills.
• Awareness of the importance of safeguarding and the role of a Mental Health professional in this.
• Enthusiasm about reducing stigma and promoting understanding of mental health issues.

Flexible Working

We will consider part-time hours (30 hours plus) and flexible working pattern applications will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis to promote a healthy work life balance.

Please see the attached job description and person specification for more information about this role and working at North East London NHS Foundation Trust. We encourage you to refer closely to this when completing your application.

We welcome your application even if you do not meet all the criteria listed in the person specification. Any development needs to help you succeed in the role, can be discussed at the interview stage.

If you are an overseas qualified nurse and wanting to start your journey to becoming a UK based registered nurse with the NMC, you can check whether you are eligible to be supported through our Capital Nurse consortium. Please visit; https://www.capitalnurselondon.co.uk/how-to-apply/. Whilst NELFT is happy to welcome overseas nurses we are unable to consider your application directly. You should submit your interest and apply through the Capital Nurse London group.

Although we are a registered sponsor organisation, we are unable to offer sponsorship for some job roles, and this will be identified through filtering questions at the start of any job application on the Trac recruitment system.

Use of AI

Applications for this role should be written by the applicant. If artificial intelligence (AI) programmes are used then the application may be rejected due to this document being an important part of the assessment process. This does not prevent applicants seeking appropriate support with applications should they need to for the purposes of any declared disability.

Person specification

Qualification

Essential criteria

• Successful completion of a graduate training (e.g. nursing, social work, occupational therapy), EMHP/CWP qualification with18 months experience or equivalent substantial CAMHS/EWMHS clinical experience

Desirable criteria

• To have completed training relevant to the service (e.g SWP/ Supervisor)
• To have completed formal CBT training (e.g. CYP-IAPT)

Experience

Essential criteria

• Experience delivering CBT interventions to CYP and their families

Desirable criteria

• Experience of working with schools to support CYP emotional well-being needs
• Experience running therapy groups and/or training events
• Experience of supervising staff

Registration

Essential criteria

• To be eligible for registration as a full member of the appropriate professional body (e.g. HCPC, NMC,BPS,BABCP, Social Work England) where appropriate

Benefits

We believe in bringing your authentic and best self to work, in order to deliver the best care to our patients. We are committed to supporting our employees holistically. Here is a snapshot of what is on offer at NELFT:

• A long-standing and award-winning approach to equality and diversity with supportive networks for ethnic minority staff, staff with disabilities or long term/chronic conditions and LGBT staff.
• A commitment to supporting colleagues to achieve a work life balance, through flexible working opportunities and our effortsto support our working parents and carers. This has resulted in us being recognised as a 'Top 10 Family Friendly Employer' from the Working Families Charity.
• Proactive health and wellbeing support, including access to our employee assistance programme, staff psychological support, individual wellbeing conversations and a network of health and wellbeing ambassadors.
• Detailed information about our wellbeing and benefits offer can be found in this link.

As a flexible working friendly organisation, we want to be sure that you can work in a way that is best for us and for our patients, and for you. Speak to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement whether that's a job share, part time hours or another flexible pattern.

Supporting our Armed Forces

We recognise the valuable contribution that the Armed Forces community make to our organisation. We have signed the Armed Forces Covenant and achieved Gold Award under the Armed Forces Employer Recognition Scheme. We have supportive policies, guaranteed interview schemes for veterans. reservists and military spouses and give additional leave to our Reservists so that they can attend their annual camp.

Equal opportunities employer

We are committed to equal opportunities and diversity and positively encourage applications from all sections of the community regardless of any protected characteristic.

We are a Disability Confident employer and have made the pledge to commit to employing more people with disabilities. If you require this application in another format i.e. Braille or audio tape please contact the recruitment team on 0300 300 1530 or email recruitment@nelft.nhs.uk.

Correspondence with us

You are advised to regularly check your emails (including any junk mail/spam folders) for correspondence related to this post.

In the event of a high number of responses to any advert, NELFT reserves the right to close the vacancy early. If you do not hear from us within three weeks of the closing date then please assume you have not been successful on this occasion.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

Applicant requirements

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Documents to download

• Job description and Person specification (PDF, 480.1KB)
• NELFT Application - Hints and Tips (PDF, 38.4KB)