Job overview
A permanent part-time Team Lead and Supervisor post (0.6 WTE) is available in Islington's School Wellbeing Service (MHST).
This is an exciting opportunity to jointly lead one of the teams within Islington’s School Wellbeing Service (SWS). The SWS is part of the national Mental Health Support Teams (MHST) initiative, aiming to improve access to help, and the general culture of emotional support within primary and secondary schools. The service is delivered as a partnership between Whittington Health and LB Islington.
We are recruiting a proactive, creative and skilled colleague to join our thriving team. The successful applicant will be passionate about mental
health in schools, widening access to services and enjoy inter-agency working.
The successful applicant will join one of our two locality teams in the School Wellbeing Service. The teams deliver preventative and early
intervention mental health work to all the borough's mainstream schools. This work includes workshops, groups and individual interventions with
CYP and school staff, as well as whole-school approaches to mental health. Each team is led by joint team leads from CAMHS and Educational
Psychology, with six School Wellbeing Practitioners in each team and three senior clinicians. The SWPs and senior clinicians are
supervised and managed by the team leads.
Please see job description for more details.
Main duties of the job
The post holder will be the joint (with the educational psychologist in the team) lead clinician in the south locality team of the School Wellbeing
Service – Islington’s MHSTs. They will line manage and supervise the School Wellbeing Practitioners (Islington’s Education Mental Health
Practitioners) in the teams, having responsibility for their professional development and training, and establishing and maintaining team and
individual caseloads. They will co-lead the team with the EP and work closely with the other team leads, team co-ordinators, Service Manager,
Project Manager and education and local authority partners.
Working for our organisation
This is a great time to join our service. We are a strong, well established friendly team with professionals from a wide range of therapeutic backgrounds and experiences. We are excited about developing the MHST in Islington so that more children and families can receive this vital support at an earlier stage in their schools.
We are committed to supporting staff development and offer additional training opportunities and reflective spaces to support your wellbeing and further promote your development as a clinician while working with us.
The community served is multi-ethnic and culturally diverse and we welcome applicants who are skilled at working with the richness and complexity of our multicultural context. We are keen to recruit applicants that reflect the local community and support them to remain in post.
We offer an exciting and dynamic environment where your ideas and career development will be valued. You will be supported directly by senior colleagues and we will develop the service together.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
We are looking for a highly skilled senior clinician who has experience in leading on and delivering CAMHS work in education settings. The
successful candidate will also have experience of delivering, teaching and supervising evidence-based practice for children and young people’s
mental health and will be skilled in CBT.
Main responsibilities include:
1. SWS Team lead role – the post holder will be the joint lead clinician in our south locality team working with the educational psychologist
in the team. The role involves working closely with the EP/joint team lead, the team manager, project manager, central CAMHS team managers and head of multi-agency CAMHS and with education and local authority partners.
2. Line management and supervision of School Wellbeing Practitioners (SWPs) – The post holder will provide weekly supervision on the delivery of evidence-based interventions for anxiety, low mood and behaviour difficulties, and education-specific
interventions. In addition to supervision, they will assist with SWP assessments and support interventions where appropriate. Experience with CBT interventions is essential and knowledge of the guided self-help interventions that the SWPs will offer is important.
3. Responsibility for the programme of induction and local training of the SWPs and other clinicians.
4. Co-ordinating and managing the referral routes for SWP direct clinical work and for managing the SWP caseloads.
5. Supporting the co-ordination, development, delivery and evaluation of the indirect workload of the SWPs, including workshops and
trainings.
6. Working with schools to set up and review input from the SWS to the school.
Please see job description for full details
Person specification
Education / Qualifications
Essential criteria
1. Post-graduate/ doctoral level qualification in: Family and Systemic Psychotherapy Educational Psychotherapy Clinical or Counselling Psychology Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy, Mental health Nursing or similar level registration for other AHPs
2. Membership of relevant professional body - DOH/UKCP/ HPC/ACP
Skills and Abilities
Essential criteria
3. Skills in direct clinical work, preventative/early intervention, training and consultation in school settings.
4. Ability to supervise other clinicians, assistants and trainees in their work with in schools.
5. Skills in facilitating client’s participation in use of routine outcome measures.
6. Skills in facilitating school staff’s participation in use of ROMs and feedback measures/evaluation.
7. Skills in assessment of risk, in relation to mental health and safeguarding issues.
8. Skills in working across agencies in relation to risk and to managing issues of confidentiality and information sharing
9. Skills in effective communication, orally and in writing, of complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS, especially within education.
10. Ability to maintain appropriate clinical records and in use of electronic recording systems
Desirable criteria
11. Skills in writing service evaluation reports.
12. Trained in Solihull Approach
13. Training in iTIPS
14. Familiarity with iMHARS model
Knowledge and Experience
Essential criteria
15. Significant experience delivering clinical work in a school or education setting.
16. Significant experience in early intervention/preventative mental health work in a school or education setting.
17. Significant experience offering consultation in a school or education setting.
18. Significant experience supporting other clinicians in offering a mental health service into schools.
19. Significant experience working with schools to develop a CAMHS or other mental health service in their school setting.
Desirable criteria
20. At least two years post qualification experience working in a CAMHS setting.
Personal Qualities
Essential criteria
21. Ability to form good working relationships and work flexibly with others in multi-agency settings in the community
22. Enthusiasm for and capability to complete designated tasks.
SAFEGUARDING CHILDREN AND ADULTS
To comply with the Trust’s Safeguarding Children and Adults policies, procedures and protocols. All individual members of staff (paid or unpaid) have a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults This will require you to:
23. Ensure you are familiar with and comply with the London Child Protection Procedures and protocols for promoting and safeguarding the welfare of children and young people.
24. Ensure you are familiar and comply with the London Multi Agency Safeguarding Vulnerable Adults Pan London Procedures.
25. Ensure you are familiar and comply with local protocols and systems for information sharing.
26. Know the appropriate contact numbers and required reporting lines.
27. Participate in required training and supervision.
28. Comply with required professional boundaries and codes of conduct
Whittington Health is committed to safeguarding all children and vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.