Senior Mental Health Practitioner

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The ideal candidate will be:
• A registered mental health practitioner with a minimum of five years' experience.
• Able to oversee all clinical interventions and resources within the service
• Able to plan and lead workshops and therapeutic groups
• Work in partnership with schools
• Provide training and support to schools
• Provide clinical supervision and line management to Band 5,6 and 7 staff
• Provide learning and development opportunities for the whole team
• Offer a SEND consultation service to other MHSTs
• Have a vast experience of SEMH provisions and working with CYP who have experienced trauma.
• Assess and manage risk and safeguarding
• Able to establish and maintain effective inter-agency and inter-team communication
• To provide specialist assessment, intervention, advice and consultation on CYP's care to colleagues, professionals from other agencies and to other non-professional carers.
• Able to maintain a high degree of professionalism when working in settings where there is a highly emotive atmosphere.
• Flexible in their approach and have resilience under pressure
• Able to work both in a team environment and autonomously
This role requires you to drive across Hertfordshire and West Essex. You must hold a full valid driving license, and access to a car to use regularly for business purposes is essential (unless you have a disability as defined by the Equality Act 2010).
If you do not meet both criteria, it is unlikely that you will be shortlisted for this role.
For further details please contact Sarah Garvey - hct.mhst@nhs.net or 01727 732031.
Word versions of documents are available if needed to allow for any adaptations to be made i.e. font, colour, background, convert to Read Aloud.

Person specification

Training and Qualifications

Essential criteria

• Degree or equivalent in relevant field Professional Qualification (RMN, DipSW, OT, SWP, IAPT or equivalent) supplemented by post graduate diploma specialist training, experience, short courses plus further specialist training to master's equivalent level
• Experience in relevant mental health/learning disability setting.
• Specialist knowledge within the field of clinical skills gained through theoretical and practical training and experience.
• Membership of relevant professional bodies

Desirable criteria

• Approved mental health professional (AMHP).
• Further training in relevant areas of Autism, Learning Disability and mental health.

Experience

Essential criteria

• Significant experience of risk assessment within a mental health or learning disability setting.
• Significant experience of working clinically in a mental health and/or learning disability setting assessing, containing and managing complex cases in a multi-disciplinary setting.
• Experience of working with people who have a learning disability and/or neurodiversity.
• Experience of working with a wide variety of groups, across the whole course of presenting challenges that reflect the full range of clinical severity including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the treat of physical abuse
• Knowledge of child development, child and adolescent mental health and a range of therapeutic models
• Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised therapies and assessment methodologies
• Multi-Disciplinary Team and multi-agency working
• Experience of dealing with Safeguarding Incidents.

Desirable criteria

• To have good knowledge of local community services.
• Provision of effective clinical/practice supervision
• Experience of developing and delivering training and/or groups

Knowledge & Skills

Essential criteria

• Ability to lead professionally and managerially.
• Ability to identify appropriate evidence based interventions for mental health
• Ability to perform under pressure, to be able to analyse information effectively, therefore ensuring correct conclusion for action.
• Evidence of well-developed critical decision-making skills
• High level of communication skills (written and verbal) including an ability to communicate effectively complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to a range of audiences.
• An ability and commitment to work as a member of a team and effectively communicate with the team.
• Ability to recognise the emotional consequences of working with children with distressing and life changing disorders and seek sup