Education Mental Health Practitioner

We are looking for a qualified Educational Mental Health Practitioner (EMHP) who wishes to join an exciting and outstanding school based Mental Health Support Team (MHST). Applicants must have completed a 1 year post graduate qualification. (Please note that this is not a training post).

The post-holder will work in the Dacorum team. The Dacorum team is a supportive and flexible environment to work in. The team uses innovation and creativity to reach children and young people across educational settings in the borough and have built solid working relationships with each setting.

This role involves working alongside EMHPs, Senior Practitioners and a Team Leader. The service provides early interventions to children and young people experiencing mild to moderate mental health concerns in an educational setting. Typically, the focus of work is anxiety, low mood and behaviour.

**The aim of the MHST is to**:

- Reduce stigma around Mental Health,
- Enhance emotional wellbeing by promoting and building resilience in children and young people through educational workshops, assemblies and PSHE lessons.
- Deliver psychoeducation and support to parent/carers and teachers to improve their understanding of children and young people’s needs.
- Support children and young people at the early stages of emotional wellbeing challenges to prevent further Mental Health intervention later in life.

The Mental Health Support Teams operate year-round, providing support to young people during school holidays in addition to term time. The core hours will be Monday - Friday 9-5 but some work may be required outside of these times

The post-holder will work with people of different cultural backgrounds and ages, and should be committed to equal opportunities.

This post affords opportunity for contribution to service development. The Hertfordshire MHST offers plenty of opportunity for career development.

Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (HPFT) is an outstanding organisation with ambitions to match. We are one of just five mental health trusts to achieve an overall rating of ‘Outstanding’ from the Care Quality Commission, and our aim is to be the leading provider of mental health and specialist learning disability services in the country.

Our family of over 3500 members of staff provide health and social care for over 400,000 people with mental ill health, physical ill health and learning disabilities across Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Norfolk, delivering these services within the community and several inpatient settings. We also deliver a range of nationally commissioned specialist services including Tier 4 services for children and young people, perinatal services, plus medium and low secure learning disabilities services.

The care we provide makes a fantastic difference to the lives of our service users, their families and carers - everything is underpinned by choice, independence and equality, with our Trust values embedded throughout:
**Our Trust values are**:
Welcoming. Kind. Positive. Respectful. Professional.

These values are at the core of who we are, everything we do, and how we do it

Would you like to be part of the HPFT family? Would you like work with us to ensure our service users live the fullest lives possible they can? Would you like to be supported in your career to be the best that you can be?

Then please read on

**In summary the role requires the post holder to**:

- Develop and maintain professional relationships with education staff,
- Be on site at allocated educational settings each day of the week,
- Provide 1-1 interventions such as low intensity CBT (guided self-help) for children, young people, parent/carers and school staff,
- Group interventions,
- Workshops for children, young people, parent/carers and school staff
- Drop-in surgeries for children, young people and school staff,
- Facilitate co-production to support service development,
- Support the team in resource development,
- Any other duties commensurate with the grade which may be required to enable effective and efficient running of the service.