Senior Mental Health Practitioner

Job overview

Interview will be held on 5th Nov 2024

This is an exciting time of growth and change within East Berkshire as our CAMH service is currently working collaboratively with children and young people, and partners to deliver the Governments Programme for mental health support to be available in schools and to provide early access to mental health assessment, formulation and support to children, young people and families.

To support the development of our established Getting Help Teams and Mental Help Support Teams, we are looking to recruit a Senior Mental Health Practitioner. We have an exciting new position available via an 18-month fixed term contract in Bracknell.

In line with the Government’s priority to increase access and availability of mental health and wellbeing support for children and young people, the Senior Mental Health Practitioner role is an exciting opportunity to be part of a growing team providing assessment, formulation and early interventions for children and young people, working across both educational settings, community settings and healthcare sectors in England

Main duties of the job

• Review referrals to the Getting Help Service and undertake a structured triage assessment to determine the mental health needs of the child or young person, assessing risk and formulating need.
• Undertake face to face assessment of young people referred to determine need for further care or level of risk.
• Formulate the primary presenting needs and difficulties of the young person, making appropriate judgments that best improve the treatment outcomes for the child, young person and their families’ as well as improve resilience and recovery and which mitigates risk to themselves or others.
• Consider a range of options regarding treatment interventions providing them with specialised advice concerning care.
• Referring to the appropriate service for support/intervention or arranging a more detailed face to face assessment if required.
• To be trained and confident in delivering evidence-based interventions/ psychoeducation and using routine outcome measures.
• To care co-ordinate and manage a defined caseload of children and young people presenting with emotional health and wellbeing difficulties.
• Co-ordinate and deliver individualised care packages / programmes for children and young people and evaluate these programmes, ensuring high standards of practice in accordance with national guidelines and trust policy.
• Provide specialist mental health advice, consultation and signposted using an outcome-based triage model, to schools, local voluntary sector services and authority partners.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The “must haves” for this role:

• be friendly, self-motivated, and self-organising,
• be confident in working in a multiagency setting, working collaboratively with colleagues in schools and across the wider system,
• enjoy regular collaboration with your peers and the senior colleagues to whom you report
• as a person, will always be looking for new or better ways to deliver care and be keen to learn, and
• most of all will have a calm, friendly and compassionate outlook and have a keen interest in working in a schools setting.

For further information about the role, please see attached job description and person specification.

We strongly encourage you to review how you meet the criteria in the person specification and write about this point-by-point in your supporting statement for the best chance of being shortlisted.

We’re committed to equal opportunities and welcome applications from all sections of the community. Our commitment to inclusion is reflected in our accreditations: Race Equality Matters Silver Trailblazer, Neurodiversity in Business Corporate Member, Disability Confident Leader, Carer Confident Level 2, and the Armed Forces Covenant Gold Award. Reasonable adjustments will be provided to candidates as needed.

We welcome a conversation about flexibility and any other questions you may have. Please don’t hesitate to email Jade Hens (Team Lead) [email protected] who’ll be delighted to help.

Please note, if we receive a high number of applications, we may close this role earlier than the advertised closing date, so please submit your application as soon as possible.