MHST Art Therapist

Job overview

An exciting opportunity to join a growing Arts Therapies workforce within the Lambeth Mental Health Support in Schools Team (MHST). You will hold your own individual art therapy caseload, as well as supporting the development and facilitation of arts-based workshops and groups within educational settings. This post may be suitable for a newly qualified Art Therapist.

The MHSTs are a new service designed to help meet the mental health needs of children and young people in education settings. They are made up of senior clinicians, CAMHS Practitioners and EMHPs or also known in SLaM as Education Wellbeing Practitioners  (EWPs) . They will be based across education settings as an additional resource within a whole-system approach to promote resilience and wellbeing, support earlier intervention, enable appropriate signposting and deliver evidence-based support, care and interventions. The MHSTs will partner with their education settings to design a bespoke offer, based on the school’s individual needs and will work with the mental health services that are already in place, such as counselling, educational psychology, school nurses, pastoral care, educational welfare officers, VCSEs, the local authority, including children’s social care, and NHS Children and Young People Mental Health Services (CYPMHS).

Main duties of the job

• To enhance accessibility to mental health services for children and young             people in schools.
• To collaborate with the Schools Mental Health Leads to support early identification of developmental, emotional and mental health difficulties in children and young people living or being educated in Lambeth.
• To work jointly with providers to increase their capacity to intervene following early identification through the delivery of brief evidence-based interventions and through liaison, consultation, training and joint working across services.
• To be part of a multi-agency training team for schools.
• To function as a specialist in art therapy principles and practice for the MHST and their networks.
• To review applications to the MHST team and where required to facilitate appropriate step- up referrals to specialist CAMHS and/or access to other relevant agencies according to the level of need.
• To collaboratively develop and embed the MHST programme in schools.
• To contribute to enabling other staff, service users and carers from diverse backgrounds to flourish by working to create a psychologically safe environment.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To provide specialist consultation, formulations, and whole school interventions for the MHST school community.
• Support and empower children, young people and families to make informed choices about their mental health and wellbeing.
• To work in partnership with the school community to provide culturally appropriate psychological interventions.
• To assess and monitor risk and draw up appropriate risk management plans.
• Provide support for EMHP’s and others in using CYP IAPT compliant routine outcome measures.
• To develop and help deliver workshops and groups for the whole school community.