Are you interested in a role with Thought-Full: 'Mental Health Support Teams in Schools' (MHSTs)?

Do you have experience in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)?

If so, we are recruiting two Band 7 Senior MHP vacancies, based in the Arun/Adur region.

We are open to a range of individuals from different core professions, the key things for us are your passion for supporting children and young people and your CBT experience/ expertise.

MHSTs were developed following the 2017 Green Paper - Transforming Children and Young Peoples Mental Health Provision. We have three core functions:

• To deliver evidence-based interventions to children and young people experiencing mild to moderate mental health difficulties
• To support schools to develop their whole school approach to mental health and emotional wellbeing
• To provide timely advice to school/ college staff to ensure that young people get the right support at the right time

We are an innovative integrated model with Thought-Full being delivered across both Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and the Education and Skills department of West Sussex County Council. We already have 6 teams across Crawley, Bognor & Felpham, Mid-Sussex, Worthing and Chichester District. In September we will be setting up three new teams in West Sussex, including Horsham, which will take us to around 50% coverage by March 2024.

Main duties of the job

As a Senior Mental Health Practitioner, you will hold a caseload and deliver brief evidence-based interventions to children and young people and/or their parents, for mild to moderate mental health difficulties, primarily adopting a cognitive behavioural approach.

In addition, you will offer supervision to trainee and qualified Educational Mental Health Practitioners (EMHPs) and where required to other members of the team. You will also work closely with team Educational Psychologists and other staff to support schools in developing their whole school approach.

As a senior member of the team you will also be involved in triaging referrals, liaising with senior mental health leads in schools and working with the MHST leadership team to develop and evaluate the service.

Experience of delivering CBT is required, however where there are gaps in knowledge CPD can be provided in order for you to be able to supervise Education Mental Health Practitioners to deliver these interventions.

About us

Sussex Partnership provides mental health and learning disability care for all age groups across Sussex and for children and young people in Hampshire.

We encourage flexible working. We know that a positive work/ life balance brings about huge health-related benefits, which has a positive impact on the care we provide. Please speak to us about flexible working, for example, home-working, part time hours, flexible start/ finish times or anything else. If it works for you and works for the role, we'll do our best to make it happen.

We'd love you to join our Trust, rated 'good' overall and 'outstanding' for caring by the CQC. Our staff agree, in our recent staff survey 82% told us that they recognise that care for patients is our top priority.

Other key survey results:

• 70% highlighting flexible working as a key point for satisfaction at work
• 79% reporting feeling able to make suggestions to improve the work in their team
• 77% identifying opportunities to show initiative in their roles

Job description

Job responsibilities

Requirements:

In order to be a successful Senior Mental Health Practitioner in our team you will be:

• Registered with the NMC, HCPC or BABCP via a core professional qualification Applications are welcomed from OTs, Nurses, Social Workers, Psychologists and CBT Therapists
• Experienced/ trained in CBT
• Passionate about supporting the prevention and early intervention of mental health difficulties for children and young people Experienced working within a mental health setting

It would also be advantageous if you are:

• Experienced working with Children and Young People suffering from mental health difficulties
• Experienced working within a school or have a good understanding of the school system

See attached Job Description and Person Specification for full details.

Anyone successful in this role will be enrolled on the PGCert Supervision of Therapeutic Practice at the University of Sussex. This is part of the MHST project development to ensure appropriate supervision of EMHPs in delivering low intensity cognitive behavioural interventions within MHSTs. The course starts in October 2023 and runs for one year with 1 teaching day a week during term time from October to May. If all criteria are not met for enrolment on the supervision course, CPD will be offered. Course fees are covered by Health Education England as part of MHST development and job plans will be amended to provide study time to meet the demands of the course.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• Core professional qualification relevant to mental health e.g. nursing with specialism in mental health or learning disability nursing, Occupational Therapy, Social Work, CBT Therapist
• Appropriate professional registration e.g. NMC, HCPC, BABCP
• Evidence of continued professional development
• Training in Low intensity or High Intensity CBT (N.B. if supervisors do not meet this criteria then in addition to the supervisor training they will join the EMHPs for their University training days on the CB interventions, and will need to produce a portfolio on this work for review by the University)

Knowledge/Experience

Essential

• Substantial post-qualification/accreditation experience of specialist psychological therapy (assessment, formulation and treatment), maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse
• Experience of specialist psychological therapy assessment and treatment of clients across a range of care settings and client groups including both adults and children
• Experience of working with people with mental health problems
• Experience of working with children and young people
• Experience of working with parents and families

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Certificate of Sponsorship

Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab) .

From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab) .

UK Registration

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).

Employer details

Employer name

Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

Address

Worthing MHST

Swandean

Worthing

BN13 3EP

Any attachments will be accessible after you click to apply.

354-CS-21230