Trainee Children's Wellbeing Practitioner

The Children's Wellbeing Practitioner (CWP) Service at Hertfordshire Community NHS Trust (HCT) has an exciting opportunity to train a new cohort of 5 trainee Children's Wellbeing Practitioners (CWPs), who will cover a variety of areas in Hertfordshire.
Post holders will undertake training with University College London (UCL) alongside working in the HCT CWP service. You will be taught to deliver evidence based guided self-help interventions for children and young people experiencing mild to moderate mental health difficulties. The post holder will use their newly developed skills to support children and young people who are referred into the service. You will receive intensive supervision to support your professional development.
Applicants will need to be ready to start work from 5th January 2026.
**Interview dates**: week beginning 27th October 2025
You will study at University College London/Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, with tutors that are renowned for their great work with children and families in the area of emotional wellbeing and mental health. The Children’s Wellbeing Practitioner (CWP) Postgraduate Diploma will begin in January 2026 and the course lasts 1 year. As part of your training you will use the theory that you learn to deliver low intensity mental health interventions to adolescents and the parents of children presenting with mild anxiety, low mood and behaviours that challenge.
In service, you will initially shadow intervention and assessment sessions; shadow and take part in triage discussions and partake in clinical skills development and supervision. You will then be expected to complete initial assessments and deliver interventions for anxiety, low mood and behaviours that challenge with the support of your supervisor. Additionally you will attend weekly supervision and training sessions; engage in service development activities and deliver workshops and groups with qualified members of staff.
A big thank you for considering joining us at Hertfordshire Community NHS Trust. You’ll find it a great place to work with many benefits offered to you as a member of our staff. The Children's Wellbeing Practitioner Service is a small service comprised of CWPs, a Senior Wellbeing Practitioner, a CWP Supervisor and the Service Lead. The team is a warm, friendly, inclusive team that strives to improve the experience of service users and staff.
We put our patients, their families and carers at the centre of our vision - Outstanding Services and Healthier Communities.
Our staff are proud to be Innovative, Caring and Agile in their work to help achieve the Trust vision
We welcome diversity in our workforce and are interested in applicants from all backgrounds and ages.
The Hertfordshire Community NHS Trust, Children’s Wellbeing Practitioner Service are recruiting 5 trainee Children’s Wellbeing Practitioners (CWPs) to improve access to early intervention mental health support for children and young people living in Hertfordshire. The training forms part of the service transformation initiative delivered by NHS England as part of the Children and Young Peoples Mental Health Psychological Trainings (CYP PT). Formerly known as CYP IAPT.
These posts are salaried at NHS Agenda for Change Band 4 and fully funded for a one year Children's Wellbeing Practitioner Postgraduate Diploma through University College London. Further intensive supervision and on the job training will be provided by an experienced supervisor.
During training, the post-holders will work under close supervision to gain experience across healthcare and community settings to enable them to gain the level of competence required to deliver high-quality, evidence-based early interventions for children and young people experiencing
mild to moderate mental health problems. You will also be taught how to deliver interventions in the community, for example, service user participation activities, training and group interventions.
Whilst in service you will be expected to initially shadow colleagues, then provide assessments and interventions to service users. You will provide interventions in 1-1 and group settings. You will also be expected to co-facilitate workshops and work on service development tasks and projects.
As part of your role you will attend weekly clinical skills and case management supervision with your allocated supervisor. You will also access group supervision, safeguarding supervision and line management meetings. As part of your training, you will be expected to video record your sessions where consent has been obtained. You will then be expected to review and reflect on some of these recordings independently and in supervision sessions as well as at university for your development. In addition, role play and giving and receiving constructive feedback are key parts of the training year.
When you start working with us you will be expected to complete a HCT Trust induction and mandatory training which ma