Senior Clinical Practitioner - Onwards & Upwards

This is a 12 month fixed-term contract. The salary will include an additional 10% Recruitment and Retention bonus.

As Senior Clinical Practitioner, you will:

• Embed Barnet's mentalisation approach and the Anna Freud Building Bridges framework within the Onwards & Upwards service, strengthening multiagency relationships and promoting reflective, psychologically informed practice.
• Provide specialist clinical oversight to staff involved in transition planning for children in care and care‑experienced adults.
• Offer mental health consultations to Social Workers and Personal Advisors, supporting early identification of emerging mental health needs.
• Facilitate reflective team supervision, clinical consultations and risk formulation, building staff confidence and resilience when working with complexity.
• Coordinate and support appropriate referrals to mental health and community services.
• Provide specialist clinical input into Barnet's Joint Transitions Tracking Panel.
• In discussion with the Assistant Head of Service, hold a small clinical caseload, ensuring direct clinical insight informs wider service practice.

Main duties of the job:

• You will be a qualified and experienced mental health practitioner with:
• A strong grounding in trauma‑informed, mentalisation‑based and systemic practice.
• Experience working with care‑experienced adolescents, care leavers or young adults with complex mental health needs.
• Confidence in providing clinical consultation, supervision and advice within multidisciplinary environments.
• A collaborative approach and ability to work effectively across Children’s Services, Mental Health and Adult Social Care.
• A commitment to improving outcomes for vulnerable young people as they transition into adulthood.

About us:

Barnet Council is seeking an experienced and passionate Senior Clinical Practitioner to join our Onwards & Upwards (O&U) service, working with care‑experienced young people and care leavers as they transition into adulthood. This is a unique opportunity to play a strategic and hands‑on clinical role, embedding trauma‑informed and mentalisation‑based practice across Children’s Social Care, Mental Health Services and Adult Social Care. The role has a primary focus on the mental health needs of young people aged 16-25, including care leavers and unaccompanied asylum‑seeking young people (UASC), particularly those who are unlikely to meet Adult Mental Health thresholds or are disengaged from CAMHS. You will be based within our Onwards and Upwards Office, working closely with Social Workers, Personal Advisors and partner agencies to promote emotional wellbeing, stability and improved long‑term outcomes.

Job responsibilities:

• To join a multi‑disciplinary team of clinicians offering a range of mental health interventions to children, young people, and their families in BICS Children’s Social Care (CSC) Clinical Team.
• Work as a lead professional on cases where the identified issue in the referred child or young person is a mental health and/or family functioning difficulty.
• To work in partnership with Children’s Social Care to implement an integrated mental health and wellbeing service for children, young people, and their families in Barnet.
• Provide specialist clinical assessments and interventions to children, young people and their families to support the management of difficulties including stress and family dysfunction aiming at all times to build their resilience and improve their outcomes.
• Provide specialist clinical consultation, advice, and training to a range of professionals contributing directly to the child’s assessment, care plan and treatment.
• Under the direction of the Clinical Manager, provide appropriate clinical supervision and line management to less experienced BICS colleagues.

Clinical Responsibilities:

• Working as a lead professional, undertake clinical assessments, including assessments of risk to children and young people (CYP), which may include using medical, psychological and social histories, observation, rating scales, psychometric testing and face‑to‑face contact with children, young people and their families.
• Identify psychological, relational, emotional, or behavioural issues in order to formulate, implement and evaluate effective treatment options and plans taking into account a broad range of therapeutic models and theories.
• Provide evidence‑based clinical interventions to CYP and their families aiming at all times to build their resilience and improve their outcomes.
• Establish rapport and build therapeutic relationships with CYP and their families to assist them in gaining insight, defining goals, and planning actions to achieve and sustain change.
• Communicate effectively with any other professionals involved in the child’s care with regularity.
• Provide specialist advice and consultations to social care colleagues and other professionals, working autonomously within professional practice guidelines and under the guidance of the clinical manager and supervisor.
• Work collaboratively within the multi‑disciplinary team, providing and using direction, support and guidance of your supervisor/line manager and the team to effectively manage the range of complexities of risk, need and ambiguity with which CYP and their families present.
• Use flexibility and creativity to engage CYP and develop relationships of trust, bringing to the attention of your supervisor/line manager any concerns relating to the quality of parenting or the safety and well‑being of children and young people within their home, school or community environments.
• Prepare high‑quality concise, informative and analytical written reports based on complex evidence in relation to your work with CYP and their families as required for a range of audiences to agreed standards and timescales.
• Attend and participate in a range of relevant statutory and non‑statutory professional meetings in relation to your clinical work, using your professional expertise and evidence to contribute towards a shared understanding of the child/young person’s emotional world and mental health or behavioural difficulties.
• To ensure practice, at all times, considers CYP’s diverse range of needs, cultural and religious contexts and wide range of linguistic, ethnic, national, economic and social backgrounds ensuring services are accessible and effective in meeting their needs.

Professional Registration:

As a clinician, employed in an area of work which requires membership of a UK professional body in order to practice e.g. UKCP, BACP, HCPC etc, it is a condition precedent of your employment to maintain membership of such a professional body. It is also your responsibility to comply with the relevant body’s code of practice, including CPD requirements. Documentary evidence of your registration with your professional body or in respect of any required qualifications will be requested, in addition to evidence of such membership being updated and maintained. Consequently, in the absence of a core profession, in addition to being able to demonstrate your clinical and leadership experience and commitment to CPD, you will need to provide evidence of a relevant qualification in CYP MH and evidence of having completed an accredited course in clinical supervision or eligibility for completion of an appropriate supervision course.

Qualifications:

• Professional qualification and registration with the relevant accrediting body in:
• Clinical/Counselling Psychology
• Systemic Psychotherapy
• CBT Therapy
• Art/Music/Drama Therapy
• Integrative Therapy
• Psychodynamic/Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
• Interpersonal Therapy

Short courses / CPD working with children, young people and families:

• CBT/Third Wave therapy
• Trauma focused interventions with children/adults
• Systemic Foundation/PG Certificate
• MBT
• DDP

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.