Joining #TeamNELFT means you’ll become part of a welcoming and supportive working environment. We’re CQC rated Good, and we want you to join us on the journey towards an Outstanding rating. NELFT has sites across North East London, Essex, Kent and Medway. We provide community and mental healthcare services to adults and children within these areas.
The Trust has award winning equality and diversity initiatives and staff health and wellbeing activities. We invest heavily in your development, because when you are valued and supported, we provide the best care to our patients. We are a Level 3 Disability Confident Leader, have been featured in the Working Families Top 10 Employers benchmark for three consecutive years, and we have achieved a Carers UK Level 1 Accreditation. Along with our staff networks and training opportunities, we work hard to embed a just and compassionate culture here at NELFT.
Find out more about NELFT careers and what makes our Trust a great place to work, in this video
Job overview
We welcome applications from highly motivated and enthusiastic mental health nurses, psychologists, social workers, psychotherapists, family therapists, and other qualified professional staff for the role of senior practitioner within SET CAMHS.
SET CAMHS has an exciting opportunity for a qualified professional to step into an established role within a diverse and experienced team delivering mental health interventions to children and young people. SET CAMHS works to the Thrive model, with this role sitting within the Getting Help, Getting More Help and Risk Support sections of the model. We are looking for dynamic individuals who are passionate about helping young people and their families to join our friendly, supportive and innovative team covering the locality of South Essex.
Working as a Senior CAMHS Practitioner in the SET CAMHS team you would have a high standard of knowledge and experience of working with young people in CAMHS services who present with a range of mental health difficulties. The successful candidate will work within the Multi-disciplinary Team (MDT) to assess and treat using the most appropriate evidenced based options to meet the needs of young people and children. The post-holder would work within the supportive and experienced senior leadership team, and support other members of the team both through MDT discussion, case support and supervision.
Main duties of the job
The role of senior practitioner is to support the delivery of a range of individual therapy within the Thrive Model, as indicated by SET CAMHS & NICE guidance. You would ideally have experience of supervising & managing others, although additional support & training can be given for this to the right candidate. You would also have a keen interest in developing innovative strategies to support young people & their families.
Children & young people who are referred to SET CAMHS have a range of presentations which would include: low mood, anxiety, obsessional compulsive disorders, self-harm, suicidal ideation, other trauma related emotional difficulties, & other mental health difficulties. For those with additional neurodevelopmental needs, interventions for their co-morbid mental health issues are provided through adapted interventions, both group and individual.
As well as your own case load, the Senior CAMHS Practitioner supports the wider clinical team to deliver therapeutic interventions, implementation of the Thrive modal through supervision, teaching & mentoring. Knowledge & experience of delivering interventions within child and adolescent mental health is essential, as is an understanding of the presentations within the context of neurodevelopmental disorders. Additional therapeutic skills & training such as CBT, Family / Systemic, DBT & other counselling approaches is desirable as is experience of providing adapted interventions.
Working for our organisation
Our Values 2025 - 2030
Working with our colleagues, patients and carers we have co-
produced three new values that we aim to embed within our
culture here at NELFT.
They are:
We are kind.
We are respectful.
We work together with our communities.
These three values help
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Please refer to the attached job description and person specification when completing your application
We pride ourselves on working within a strong and supportive multi-disciplinary team with opportunities for learning, development, and progression.
Locality Teams in CAMHS
The aim of CAMHS is to respond earlier to children and young people’s needs in order to help prevent, reduce or delay the need for more specialist interventions. This transformation of children and young people’s mental health services has a clinical focus, integrated with local authorities to deliver a long term collaborative approach to planning and delivering services.
The service is driven by the principles underpinning the national CYP-IAPT programme (Children and Young People’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies); evidence based interventions, routine measurement of outcomes, access to high quality training and supervision for professionals and co-production with children and young people.
Certificates of Sponsorship
Although we are a registered sponsor organisation, we are unable to offer sponsorship for all job roles. Please check your eligibility under the UKVI points-based system. When calculating the basic salary for sponsorship, HCAS (High-Cost Area Supplement) is not included to ensure fairness and consistency within our Trust.
Use of AI
Please see attached document regarding acceptable use of AI during the recruitment process.
Person specification
Qualification
Essential criteria
1. Successful completion of a post-graduate training in psychological practice ( psychologist, family therapist, child and adolescent psychotherapist) or graduate training ( nursing, social work, occupational therapy)
2. To be eligible for registration as a full member of the appropriate professional body ( HCPC, NMC)
Desirable criteria
3. Ongoing
Experience
Essential criteria
4. Experience of working with difficult, disturbed or challenging children/young people requiring skilled and complex interventions.
5. Experience of providing mental health interventions to children and young people with neurodevelopmental disorders.
Desirable criteria
6. Experience of providing specialist individual interventions with a wide variety of children and young people, from 3 to 19 years old- presenting problems at the most severe end of the spectrum
7. Experience of managing teams
Experience
Essential criteria
8. Knowledge of working with young people and staff
Desirable criteria
9. Supervising staff
Benefits
We believe in bringing your authentic and best self to work, in order to deliver the best care to our patients. We are committed to supporting our employees holistically. Here is a snapshot of what is on offer at NELFT:
10. A long-standing and award-winning approach to equality and diversity with supportive networks for ethnic minority staff, staff with disabilities or long term/chronic conditions and LGBT staff.
11. A commitment to supporting colleagues to achieve a work life balance, through flexible working opportunities and our effortsto support our working parents and carers. This has resulted in us being recognised as a ‘Top 10 Family Friendly Employer’ from the Working Families Charity.
12. Proactive health and wellbeing support, including access to our employee assistance programme, staff psychological support, individual wellbeing conversations and a network of health and wellbeing ambassadors.
13. Detailed information about our wellbeing and benefits offer can be found in this link.
As a flexible working friendly organisation, we want to be sure that you can work in a way that is best for us and for our patients, and for you. Speak to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement whether that’s a job share, part time hours or another flexible pattern.