Job overview
The Mental Health Support Teams are a service designed to help meet the mental health needs of children and young people in educational settings. The MHS Teams are made up of Senior Clinicians, CAMHS Practitioners, Education Mental Health Practitioners (EMHPs) and Children well being practitioners (CWP). They are based across education settings as an additional resource within a whole-system approach to promote resilience and well being, support earlier intervention, enable appropriate signposting and deliver evidence-based support, care and interventions.
Main duties of the job
There are currently eight MHSTs across Luton, Central Bedfordshire and Bedford, working across 110 schools in total. The successful candidate will be employed by Bedfordshire & Luton CAMHS (ELFT), where the MHSTs deliver evidence-based therapeutic interventions, such as Low-Intensity Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (LI-CBT) and emotional wellbeing interventions. You will be equipped with the necessary skills, knowledge and capabilities to work as a qualified core professional/EMHP/CWP, as an autonomous and responsible practitioner within your scope of practice, alongside education and health colleagues.
You will be confident in providing support to young people and families with anxiety, low mood and challenging behaviours. You will be flexible and creative in responding to the needs of the school populations, with excellent support from your team and supervision. You will also be able to adapt to working remotely, prioritising access to services and resources.
Working for our organisation
Our mission is to make a positive difference to people's lives by improving the quality of life for all we serve. Our values are: We Care, We Respect, We are Inclusive – so we are looking for people who live and breathe these qualities when supporting service users and carers, and in their relationships with colleagues in the Trust and our partner organisations.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
-To contribute towards triages, assessments and providing evidence-based interventions, advice and support to professionals, parents and children/young people.
-To be responsible for managing and prioritising own workload.
-To support the delivery of training and workshops to groups of young people, parents and professionals.
-To assess risk and seek supervision from the Operational Lead or senior staff in the team as necessary when self-harm or suicidal thoughts are expressed.
-To keep accurate, up-to-date electronic records in keeping with the Trust policy on record keeping standards.
-To liaise with and support other professionals involved with identified children, young people and families.
-To attend professional meetings as required.
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria
1. Core profession or successful completion of the Education Mental Health Practitioner (EMHP) or Child Wellbeing Practitioner (CWP) post-graduate diploma. E.g., Qualified EMHP/CWP, Mental Health Nurse, Learning Disabilities Nurse, Social Worker, Allied Health Professional
2. Post qualification experience in core profession or as EMHP/CWP
3. Experience of working in schools
Desirable criteria
4. Evidence of Continuous Professional Development (CPD) in Child and Adolescent Mental Health or Family Work training
Experience
Essential criteria
5. Experience of working with children and young people with mild to moderate mental health problems, their families and others in educational and health settings – for newly qualified staff, this could relate to placement experience
6. Experience of working within a multidisciplinary setting
7. Experience of delivering specific therapeutic interventions to children, young people or their families (e.g. Guided Self Help, CBT, parent work)
Desirable criteria
8. CAMHS experience
9. Experience of assessing and meeting the needs of schools to deliver psycho-education on mental health or emotional wellbeing to different groups, including parents, teaching staff and young people
10. Experience of adapting resources to be able to deliver online /via phone/ Google Classroom
Knowledge
Essential criteria
11. Ability to carry out 1:1 therapeutic mental health interventions with children and families
12. Ability to conduct group parenting and group young person programmes
13. Ability to work within educational settings to increase mental health awareness within the staff group
Desirable criteria
14. Ability to conduct other therapeutic group interventions with children and their families
15. Ability to teach others about mental health issues
16. Ability to think and work systemically