Qualified Educational Mental Health/Child Wellbeing Practitioner

Job overview

The SEND MHST (Mental Health Support Team) are seeking to appoint a motivated, committed, flexible and forward thinking Qualified EMHP (Educational Mental Health Practitioner) or CWP (Child wellbeing practitioner) to work in our MHST team, who is committed to supporting Children and Young People (CYP) and their families across Hertfordshire.

The Mental Health Support Team works specifically with a SEND children and families across Hertfordshire and West Essex schools, delivering early intervention mental health support and supporting schools to develop their whole school approach to emotional wellbeing.

This is a really exciting opportunity to take your EMHP or CWP training and build the MHST offering to children, families and schools who can have a great need for mental health support, whilst working very creatively with the training to meet the children’s additional needs and support the schools.

Main duties of the job

You will be working in a variety of school environments across Hertfordshire and West Essex, combined with being part of a “virtual team” to deliver our service. We operate from 7-7 Monday to Friday.

• Must have some SEND experience
• Creative and flexible in their approach
• Have a good understanding of children with additional needs learning styles, and how to adapt practice to support children and their families
• Able to work and build relationships with a wide variety of professionals, schools, and families
• Be able to deliver evidence-based interventions for children and young people in education settings
• Have a good understanding of risk assessing and seek support from supervisor to manage risk
• Be willing and able to participate fully in supervision
• Flexible in their approach and have resilience under pressure
• Able to work both in a team environment and autonomously
• Able to maintain a high degree of professionalism when working in settings where there is a highly emotive atmosphere.

Working for our organisation

• Regular clinical and professional supervision
• Regular appraisal, personal development planning and opportunities for continuing professional development. This includes specific support with regards to fulfilling the MHST role such as co-facilitating workshops.
• Regular opportunities to meet as a team
• Regular CPD and Peer Reflection
• Opportunities to work closely with a multi-disciplinary team including learning from other evidence-based frameworks and approaches.
• Involvement in service development
• Opportunities to provide line management and clinical supervision to other members of the MHST team

NHS Discounts

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• Delivering evidence-based intervention for children and young people in an education setting with mild to moderate mental health and SEND additional needs.
• Helping children and young people within these settings who present with more severe problems to rapidly access more specialist services
• Supporting and facilitating staff in education settings to identify and where appropriate manage issues related to mental health and wellbeing
• Working with and within education environments to afford better access to specialist mental health services
• To support schools in developing strategies/activities to promote emotional well-being and positive mental health.
• To work with families following the parent as therapist method to support emotional wellbeing within the home
• To support the school to develop their overall whole school approach to emotional wellbeing
• And to use the acquired skills, knowledge, and abilities to deliver a service based within education settings that builds on and reinforces but does not replace those initiatives that already exist within these environments.

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).

For further details / informal visits contact:

Sarah Garvey - MHST Team Lead, Hertfordshire Community NHS Trust on 01727 732031 or email: [email protected]

We are committed to supporting flexible working options for staff, wherever possible, and welcome discussions on flexible working patterns to support our staff to maintain a healthy work life balance.

Person specification

Qualifications

• Successful completion of the HEE commissioned 1yr ‘Education Mental Health Practitioner’ course. Or CWP course
• A further relevant degree qualification
• Experience in relevant mental health/learning disability setting

• A relevant teaching qualification
• Further training in relevant areas of Autism, Learning disabilities and Mental health

Experience and Knowledge

• Experience of working with children and young people, their families, and others.
• Experience of working with children with learning disability and or Autism and/or mental health
• Experience of Assessment
• Experience of safeguarding, assessing risk and communicating concerns
• Experience of working and liaising with a wide variety of agencies and stakeholders
• Experience of working with children who cannot communicate verbally
• Experience of adapting resources to support additional SEN needs
• Experience working in a service which has agreed targets in place to demonstrate clinical outcomes.
• Experience in using an electronic clinical records and data collection system.
• Excellent IT skills including use of databases, spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations
• An ability and commitment to work as a member of a team and effectively communicate,

• Experience of working with children and their families in a healthcare and education setting
• An understanding of the impact of learning disability, Autism and mental health difficulties and challenging behaviour on family life.
• Experience of working with children and young people who have social, emotional and/or behavioural difficulties, and those who have experienced a mental health problem
• Knowledge of evidence-based practice
• Experience of working with anxiety disorders, affective (mood) disorders
• Experience of navigating complex social systems and environments, who may have conflicting priorities or agendas
• Experience of working with looked after children
• Experience of working with other vulnerable groups
• Experience of educating others to work with additional needs
• Experience of supporting staff wellbeing and emotional resilience
• Understanding of how to embed emotional wellbeing support into the school environment

Skills & Abilities

• Demonstrates an understanding of anxiety, depression, and challenging behavior and how it may present in universal services
• Demonstrate an understanding of the impact Autism and/or learning disability can have on a family environment
• Demonstrates understanding of the need to use evidence based psychological models and how it relates to this post
• Knowledge of factors affecting acceptability and accessibility of mental health care
• Knowledge of educational environments
• Knowledge of safeguarding issues
• Ability to carry out 1:1 therapeutic mental health intervention with children/families
• Ability to conduct groups and workshops with children with Autism and or learning disability
• Ability to conduct group teacher or parenting workshops
• Ability to work within educational settings to increase mental health awareness within the staff group
• Ability to conduct mental health assessments of children and young people
• Ability take appropriate action to mitigate or manage risk
• Ability to teach others about mental health issues

• Demonstrates knowledge of the stressors young people may encounter in an educational setting and the impact that these can have on mental health
• Knowledge of Mental capacity Act
• Knowledge of the functional operation of PALMS and specialist CAMHS teams
• Knowledge of the school’s safeguarding procedures and who the Designated Safeguarding Lead, (DSL), is in each establishment that they work in
• Ability to be creative in your presentations and adapt to meet the individual needs of your audience.

Personal Qualities

• An interest in and commitment to working with children who have a learning disability and/or Autism and/or mental health difficulties
• Ability to work with children and young people whose behavior is personally challenging
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Able to write clear reports and letters
• Ability to work within a team and foster good working relationships
• Ability to meet targets and deadlines
• Ability to manage potentially distressing phone calls and situations
• Values that match the positive behavior ethos.
• Capable of using initiative and managing professional boundaries
• Ability to recognize the emotional consequences of working with children with distressing and life changing disorders and seek support if needed
• Ability to recognize signs of stress and seek appropriate support
• Ability to work as part of a “virtual” team
• Able to challenge and be challenged
• Ability to use clinical supervision positively and effectively
• Able to develop good therapeutic relationships with young people
• Ability to deliver interventions to groups (Young people and parent groups)
• Skills in delivering Guided Self-Help interventions
• Take responsibility for own professional development and make full use of supervision
• Ability to assess risk and understanding the importance of assessing risk
• Ability to manage own caseload and demonstrate good time management and prioritization skills.

• Ability to facilitate psycho education sessions to professionals (i.e. teachers)

Other

• Have full access to a car with business insurance (unless you have a disability as defined by the equality act 2010)
• Able to travel independently across Hertfordshire and West Essex
• Ability and willingness to work outside of office hours when required for the role