Specialist Behaviour Support Practitioner

An exciting opportunity has arisen to recruit a Band 6 Specialist Behaviour Support Practitioner to work as part of the developing Child & Young People's Enhanced Support Service (CYPRESS), covering West Sussex. The post is for 5 days a week (1.0 WTE), with options to work flexibly across the week. The post is initially offered on a 18 month fixed term contract.

We are a multi-disciplinary team (including clinical psychology, speech & language therapy, occupational therapy and positive behaviour support) that provides support to families who have a child with a learning disability, who is presenting with behaviours that challenge.

Our service fits with the trusts wider goal of developing services to meet the Transforming Care Agenda, as part of the Learning Disability and Autism programme. As a service we encourage innovative and creative practice and there will be many opportunities to get involved with service developments.

The post holder will be part of a dynamic and supportive multi-disciplinary team and will join a service with good opportunities for peer support and CPD. We adopt a multi-agency approach to supporting clients and have close links with our CAMHS colleagues, social care, education, residential services and the third sector.

As a specialist behaviour support practitioner your role will be varied, but there will be a focus on multi-disciplinary and multi-agency working. Clinical work is focussed on providing PBS informed assessments and developing behaviour support plans to the networks supporting young people with complex challenging behaviour.

You will hold a small caseload offering intensive assessments and interventions to young people with challenging behaviour and their families, working closely with education, support services, other health and social care professionals. You will be supported by the wider MDT, who can offer advice and consultation, as well as providing specialist assessments to help ensure a holistic approach can be adopted. Working within this role will require having considerable experience of working within the Positive Behaviour Support framework. There will be opportunities to link with behaviour support practice networks within West Sussex.

The role will offer opportunities to support service developments and link in with other PBS practitioners working across Sussex CAMHS and the local authority. We are also planning to develop opportunities to provide training sessions and workshops to families/carers and professionals.

Sussex Partnership provides mental health and learning disability care for all age groups across Sussex and for children and young people in Hampshire.

We encourage flexible working. We know that a positive work/ life balance brings about huge health-related benefits, which has a positive impact on the care we provide. Please speak to us about flexible working, for example, home-working, part time hours, flexible start/ finish times or anything else. If it works for you and works for the role, we'll do our best to make it happen.

We’d love you to join our Trust, rated ‘good’ overall and ‘outstanding’ for caring by the CQC. Our staff agree, in our recent staff survey 82% told us that they recognise that care for patients is our top priority.

**Other key survey results**:

- 70% highlighting flexible working as a key point for satisfaction at work
- 79% reporting feeling able to make suggestions to improve the work in their team
- 77% identifying opportunities to show initiative in their roles

**CYPRESS**: We are a relatively new service commissioned as part of the Learning Disability and Autism Programme. We have close relationships with our commissioners and aim to work alongside our social care, residential and education colleagues to ensure holistic support is offered in a joined up way.

We are happy to arrange informal visits.