Senior Mental Health Practitionernhs Afc: Band 7

Job overview

We are currently seeking a senior mental health practitioner for our CAMHS Adolescent Mental Health Team (AMHT)

The North Bedfordshire CAMHS Adolescent Mental Health Team (AMHT) are a multi-disciplinary team who provide a high quality service to children (and their families) presenting with significant risks and complex mental health and behavioural needs. We are looking for a dynamic, enthusiastic and confident senior mental health practitioner to join our friendly and award winning professional team.

If you would like more information about this opportunity, or to arrange an informal visit please contact Kit Chand Operational Lead

The senior mental health practitioner will undertake and interesting a varied role, comprising of undertaking therapeutic intervention in accordance with their professional background and training, caseload management, care coordination and have a passion and interest in multi-agency collaboration and working. Due to the complex needs of young people accessing support from our team, all cases have a minimum of 2 practitioners working together.

To the meet the needs of young people accessing our pathway, the team offers a unique blend of flexible clinic based and assertive outreach intervention and has a focus on establishing and maintaining therapeutic engagement, a strengths based approach and close working and liaison with the network/system around the child/young person and their family/carers.

To support you in this role, you will receive regular clinical and management supervision sessions and access to a variety of CPD sessions. The team is clinically led and you will also have the opportunity to participate in weekly clinical discussions with the team.

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.

This post will provide a highly specialist mental health service to children, young people and their families, who have complex mental health needs by offering specialist assessment and treatment packages of care. This is a community based post, located within the Adolescent Mental Health Team (AMHT) care pathway offering flexible, evidence-based episodes of care to manage complex clinical presentations and ensure that the optimum level of care is achieved.

The post holder will require a high degree of professional autonomy and self-management, and will be a highly visible presence in clinical practice.

• Children, young people and their families
• Adolescent Mental Health Team in CAMHS
• Emotional and Behavioural Team in CAMHS
• Senior Management Team
• CAMHS nurses across the Trust
• Multi disciplinary colleagues in CAMHS
• Other professionals working with children and young people in social services, health, education, youth offending and the voluntary sector
• Healthcare Governance Leads across the directorate
• Trust corporate departments including Human resources, Training and development, IM&T etc.

• To act as care coordinator for an identified caseload and to be responsible for the co-ordination of assessment, planning, implementation and evaluation of therapeutic packages of care
• To provide comprehensive specialist assessments - including needs and risk assessment - of children and adolescents and their families with complex mental health problems, based on having a good working knowledge of relevant theory and practice
• To work as a senior practitioner providing clinically effective and appropriate therapeutic interventions for children, adolescents and their families taking into account the complexities of mental health problems
• To provide consultation to professionals working with children and young people and when appropriate teaching (e.g. GPs, health visitors, social workers, teachers etc) working at tiers 1 and tiers 2
• To be able to recognize child protection situations and be aware of and adhere to Safeguarding Guidelines and know when to inform and share these concerns with other colleagues
• To act in accordance with CPA guidelines within the community setting and to have the skills and knowledge to apply these appropriately to young people
• To work effectively with colleagues from other disciplines and organisations as appropriate throughout the assessment and care planning process
• Based on the assessments and reports to convey sensitive, complex and sometimes unwelcome information to clients and other professionals and manage this as constructively as possible
• To provide professional advice and guidance to colleagues and other professionals who come into contact and who have an important influence with children and young…