Mental Health

**About Us**
Working for us at West Sussex County Council is all about making a positive difference to the people of West Sussex. The Working Age Mental Health Services (WAMHS) team has a vacancy for a full time Mental Health & Wellbeing Officer.

We’re embracing a strengths-based approach and working within a community-led support model that builds on the assets and strengths of both people and their local communities. Together, we’ll focus on prevention, enablement, reablement and safety, to promote wellbeing and independence. We’ll ensure that residents, families, and communities have the right support in place, and at the right time.

We provide a working environment that values professional supervision and offers the right balance between challenge and support. This provides our workforce with what they need to deliver the best possible outcomes for our residents. We work to ensure that innovation and evidence-based practice underpins what we do and that we maintain an environment within which our Mental Health & Wellbeing Officers can develop and progress in their careers. If you have the talent and ambition to achieve the best for the people we serve, then we will support you to progress and develop throughout your social work career.

This could be the opportunity for you to really make that differenceso read on to find out more
**About The Job** Salary**: £29,540 to £32,061 per annum
**Working Pattern**: Full time, 37 hours per week
**Contract Type**:Permanent
**Location**: Horsham
**Interview Date**:8th & 9th September

You will be part of a multi-disciplinary team in West Sussex delivering trauma-informed, person-centred support for clients. You will adopt a curious, creative and collaborative approach to service provision, fostering relationships with professionals to ensure that clients receive wrap-around support. The team will inform Changing Futures Sussex work to identify blocks and barriers for clients within the system, recognising best practice and working flexibly to overcome challenges for clients you are supporting.

As a Mental Health Prevention & Wellbeing Officer:

- You will have a distinctive contribution to make to the current challenges faced in mental health services.
- You will need to fully understand and implement a strength-based approach that will ensure that all clients are supported in this manner. This approach would be applied in all elements of social care including assessment, planning, implementing, and review of clients care.
- You will be working with Social Workers closely across services, both internally within Adult Social Care, and externally with our partner organisations such as Sussex Partnership Foundation Trust and other third sector agencies. To do this you will need the ability to maintain and build on relationships with several agencies to ensure effective support is provided to customers using mental health services.
- You will be working with clients who need intensive support that will enable them to live meaningful and independent lives. You will be supporting clients in the community and those being discharged from hospitals and will require the ability to work under pressure.
- You will work with clients with specific mental health difficulties, in conjunction with either: experiences of domestic violence, substance misuse, contact with the criminal justice system_ _or homelessness.
- Ability to analyse and interpret complex data and information and prioritise needs to make recommendations / decisions which will have a positive outcome.
- Highly developed communication skills to persuade, negotiate or influence within or outside the organisation to achieve challenging / sensitive objectives and ensure implementation of solutions.
- Ability to challenge existing practices and identify innovative solutions, setting timescales and objectives, and reviewing effectiveness of service delivery.
- Ability to work in a multi-agency working environment that contributes to improvements for individuals and/or services.
- Ability to make sound pragmatic problem solving decisions, which may have a wider service impact and could be business critical, including the ability to tackle difficult problems of a technical, professional, resource or people related nature using existing policies, procedures and knowledge to devise approaches.
- Ability to recognise the limits of own accountability and responsibility, and to seek appropriate support, advice and supervision.

**Qualifications and/or experience**:

- GSCE English and Maths, or equivalent qualification or experience demonstrating that level of literacy and numeracy.
- Experience of working within adult social care, or a care provider or health provider, with experience of working with individuals who have complex mental disorder.
- Up to date knowledge and experience of safeguarding, assessment and review processes, policies and legislation.
- Working knowledge of financial eligibility for statutory servi