Primary Mental Health Worker

We are looking for a qualified nurse, Occupational Therapist or social worker with 2 years post qualified experience in children and young people's mental health to join us as a Band 6 Primary Mental Health Workers in the CAMHS West Hampshire Early Help Service.

We work across New Forest, Eastleigh, Winchester and Andover and you can choose your base from one of those areas. You will be experienced to work part of the week in Ashurst, but your other days will be remote working or working in your local base. Your role will be fast paced but rewarding with lots of opportunities for learning and developing your skills and knowledge.

Role is for a FTC/Secondment through to 31/3/24

You will work as part of a team in the West Hampshire CAMHS Early Help Service, providing early intervention to children, young people and their families from point of referral into the service. An important part of your role will be to work in the Single Point of Access responding to all referrals into the service, queries, offering advice and consultation. This is a fast paced, dynamic part of the team, currently responding to a high level of demand. This role gives you great opportunities for learning about wider mental health issues and wider service pathways.

You will work as part of a team that, alongside the Single Point Access delivers initial assessments, workshops, group work, mental health forums, training and consultation.

These roles require you to have a good understanding of mental health disorders, assessment, theoretical knowledge and a range of therapeutic interventions.

To protect the health and safety of our staff/workers, patients, and those attending our sites, we encourage our workforce to get fully vaccinated against COVID.

The post holder will require a high degree of professional autonomy and self-management and will be required to account for their professional practice through appraisal and audit. As a Trust we are committed to developing skills and therapeutic interventions and use a wide variety of evidence-based therapy approaches with children and young people. Our service has an excellent track record, and a commitment to robust evidence-based supervision and ongoing training. This is a service that is also focussed on staff support and wellbeing, with team champions leading this work, reporting directly into the leadership team. Training and development opportunities are available, including a New To CAMHS induction programme, in-house training and a commitment to ongoing CPD.

We can be flexible with where your office base is (Ashurst, Eastleigh or Andover), and travel between sites will be paid.

**Your role will be multi-faceted**: You will work in our clinics or from home working in the Single Point of Access Service that triages all referrals into the service. You will respond to urgent and priority referrals and calls from families and professionals. You will work with the team to provide telephone assessment and consultation, advice and liaison with third party sector and stakeholders, risk management and care planning and decide on an appropriate course of action. Many referrals are urgent, and you will need to demonstrate good clinical judgement and skill, the ability to manage high levels of distress and expectation and demonstrate good interpersonal skills. This is considered an essential role in CAMHS and a percentage of your working week will be spent in this role. It is a very busy frontline role, and you will require excellent IT skills, an ability to work with processes and systems, the ability to work under pressure, good mental health knowledge, excellent mental health assessment skills, and be able to demonstrate resilience and tenacity.

You will deliver initial and specialist assessments, utilising a range of theoretical knowledge, evidenced based therapeutic interventions, and relevant assessment tools. You will join multi-disciplinary clinical meetings to determine outcomes and planning for future interventions.

You may have some opportunities to hold a small case load and deliver evidence-based interventions such as CBT, DBT, ACT, systemic based therapy. You will require a knowledge of theoretical understanding for example attachment, trauma, neuro-developmental, mood disorders, anxiety, eating disorders etc.

Experience of risk assessment, care planning, care management and collaborative working with young people and families is a key part of this role.

You will contribute to the development, planning, delivery, and critical evaluation of therapeutic interventions based on the stepped care approach in line with our service expansion, incorporating group work and workshops, mental health forums, training and consultation

You will need to demonstrate skills and aptitudes for time management and execution of tasks promptly to meet CAMHS targets.

You will be required to keep abreast of current training and practice in all relevant areas.