Senior Mental Health Practitioner

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

Schools and other education settings play an important role in supporting the emotional wellbeing and mental health of children and young people. They can promote good emotional wellbeing, support the learning of social and emotional skills, reduce the stigma associated with mental health difficulties, and spot potential difficulties early on

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.

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

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

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

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 Rainham, Essex.

Probationary Period

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

**Skills needed for the post**:
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

Use of AI