Band 6 Education Mental Health Practitioner and Supervisor

The Mental Health Support Teams (MHST) service is an exciting initiative in the Bristol, North Somerset, and South Gloucestershire (BNSSG) commissioning area. It is part of the Government's response to the 2017 Green Paper to increase access to mental health support by delivering evidence-based early interventions in educational settings for children and young people (CYP) presenting with mild to moderate mental health difficulties.

The post holder will work as an autonomous and responsible EMHP while also offering supervision within the scope of the MHST initiative.

The post holder will work in partnership with schools to deliver a range of mental health interventions within school settings. This may involve group work or direct work with children and young people, as well as offering mental health-based consultation and advice to teaching staff.

The post holder will ensure the effective coordination of clinical care provided within schools, including consideration of safeguarding and clinical risk issues where indicated.

The post holder will contribute to the clinical leadership of the team, providing supervision and caseload management to trainee and qualified EMHPs.

The post holder will be responsible for clinical skills supervision and caseload management supervision of EMHPs within the MHST.

Therapeutic Assessment and Intervention:

Assess and deliver outcome focused, evidence-based interventions in educational settings for children and young people experiencing mild to moderate mental health difficulties, working at all times in collaboration with and giving respect to the education function of the setting in which the post-holder is working.

Facilitate fair access to services and promote social inclusion regardless of age, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or disability.

Supervision:

Deliver clinical supervision to supervisee's on a scheduled basis to ensure safe practice and the governance obligations of the MHST service are adhered to.

Effort and Health & Safety Factors:

Working with service users in distress and who on occasion may have used coping strategies such as self-harm, or present as hostile, confused and have difficulty communicating and as a result may pose risks to themselves or the safety of others.

Frequent driving and working across multiple sites to deliver interventions and attend to administrative tasks. There is an expectation to work mainly out of allocated schools but the post holder must be prepared to attend satellite sites, our main office and some home working.

Please see the attached job description for a full list of duties and responsibilities.

We are AWP (Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust): a diverse organisation with over 5,000 dedicated staff providing inpatient and community-based mental health care.

We provide services from a range of locations to approximately 1.8 million people living in Bath and North East Somerset (B&NES), Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Swindon, across the county of Wiltshire and in parts of Dorset.

Our outstanding people promote mental health and wellbeing. The expertise and resources within AWP are dedicated to a person-centred approach for those who use our services and for all employees. We recognise that happy and fulfilled employees give better care.

AWP is committed to support and create a positive research and evidence-based environment and culture, which can have a beneficial impact on everyone who works for the organisation and the care we provide to those who use our services.

At AWP we actively encourage applicants from all backgrounds; we are particularly keen to encourage applications from people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, those with disabilities and from the LGBTQ+ community. We want people to bring their unique blend of experiences, backgrounds, perspectives and knowledge to AWP, as diversity makes us stronger.

Work in partnership to support children and young people experiencing mild to moderate mental health difficulties, along with their parents/carers, families, and educators, in the self-management of presenting difficulties.

Work in effective, evidence-based partnership with children, young people, their families, and their educators in the development of intervention plans and agreed outcomes.

Support and empower children, young people, their parents/carers, families, and educators to make informed choices about the interventions being offered.

Promote participation and engagement of children, young people, their parents/carers, families, and educators.

Actively increase autonomy and the ability of children and young people to make positive changes for themselves and future service users.

Operate at all times from an inclusive values base in line with the core CYPIAPT principles.

Demonstrate the ability to communicate in an empathic and reassuring manner.

Communicate information in a way that is relevant and understandable for service users and carers, working in line with practice standards and operational policies.

Please see the attached job description for a full list of duties and responsibilities.