Lead Practitioner in Huyton

Main area: Children and Young Persons Mental Health Services

Grade: Band 7

Contract: Permanent

Hours: Full time - 37.5 hours per week (shift working across a 24/7 service)

Job ref: 350-CC7785640-A

Site: Knowsley Resource and Recovery Centre

Town: Whiston

Salary: £47,810 - £54,710 per annum

Salary period: Yearly

Closing: 23/03/2026 23:59

Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust celebrates diversity and promotes equal opportunities; we are committed to challenging and eliminating racism and other forms of discrimination and advancing and promoting equality of opportunity in the provision of services and creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We believe that everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and respect.

We take positive action to support disadvantaged groups and also particularly encourage applications from ethnically diverse, disabled and LGBTQIA+ people that are under-represented in our workforce. Furthermore, we welcome applications from reservists and ex-armed forces personnel as we recognise the benefits of the values, skills, training and experience that they bring to their work with us. We encourage all applicants to share their equality information with us.

Job overview: This post offers a great diverse set of opportunities to join a developing team. The scope within this role is skill enhancing and a developmental opportunity. The Team provides assessment and intensive home treatment as an alternative to hospital admission for Children and young people in Crisis, in the areas of Warrington, Halton, Knowsley & St Helens. The team work collaboratively with our Local CAMH's Community Team and a number of agencies and service providers in a variety of community bases. The service is a 24 hour service and the successful candidate will be needed to support the team across these hours.

Main duties of the job:

• As a Lead Practitioner, you will provide a specialised role in the development and implementation of services and care pathways for children and young people with mental health problems within the THRIVE Framework for service delivery.
• You will be responsible for the clinical oversight of the shift and supporting the team throughout the shift.
• You will be expected to provide specialist interventions, advice, consultancy and supervision to both colleagues and colleagues within external partner agencies in line with THRIVE.
• As the post is identified within the CYPMH strategy, it is expected the role will continue to develop in line with national and local initiatives.

Working for our organisation: Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 1.4 million people across our region and are also commissioned for services that cover the North West, North Wales and the Midlands. We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities. At the heart of all we do is our commitment to 'perfect care' – care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together. We're currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so. Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities:

• To hold a caseload of complex assessments, treatment and consultation work based upon a specialised, conceptual framework and employing research based evidence.
• To provide direct specialist therapeutic interventions in line with the grading of the post, including assessments, formulation and therapeutic input into children, young people and families referred into the service.
• Undertake risk assessments and care plans accordingly, in line with the THRIVE framework.
• To work in ways that are sensitive to the needs of children and young people families from a wide range of racial, cultural and religious backgrounds.
• To be responsible for the authorising of referrals to children and Young People’s services, including urgent referrals.
• To participate directly in the teams duty rota’s and provide support and guidance to other colleagues undertaking the role.
• To exercise responsibility and autonomy, within supervisory, managerial and accountability structures, for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients.
• To deliver care co-ordination, ensuring effective assessment, care planning and risk management processes are maintained. Involve the views of children, their families, referring agents and other professionals involved in the network of care including organising multiagency meetings.
• To produce a clinical formulation and intervention plan founded on evidence based practice in co-operation with the child young person and carers.
• To hold responsibility for standards of clinical practice within area of specialist knowledge.
• To work jointly and collaboratively with other team members in order to enhance and develop the provision of services to young people and their families.
• To have an effective knowledge base of other modalities so as to engage and work effectively with colleagues in other disciplines.
• To provide consultation, advice and guidance to colleagues and their team this is underpinned by theoretical specialist knowledge.
• To promote effective multi-agency work.
• To contribute theoretical knowledge to the process of managing risk within the multi-agency network.
• Undertake risk management for all children including the protective and risk factors present in the network of significant relationships.
• Identify and respond appropriately to child protection issues, as described with the guidelines of Local Safeguarding Children’s Board and Merseycare Foundation Trust safeguarding policies.
• Maintain clear and comprehensive electronic clinical records, to ensure information is accurate and complies with Data Protection Act and professional body and Trust standards.
• To engage with using routine outcome measures as clinically appropriate including their use in clinical practice and inputting data into clinical records.
• To work collaboratively with children, young people and their families and contribute to the trust’s service user participation agenda.

Person specification:

• Qualifications: Degree, or equivalent, or equivalent work-based experience. Registration with relevant professional body. Appropriate Prescriber. Evidence of CPD/short courses. Evidence of influencing, motivating and negotiating with others to achieve change in relation to care. Post graduate diploma or working towards MSC in advanced clinical practice.
• Knowledge/Experience: Experience of management and clinical leadership. Experience of successful multi-agency working. Awareness of current national and local agenda in health and social care. Evidence of being able to communicate complex, sensitive information and advice on healthcare to patients / carers / colleagues. Understanding of multi-agency working. Ability to network with multidisciplinary colleagues. Awareness of factors that contribute to good health and the importance of promoting these in line with organisational public health policy.
• Values: Accountability, Respect, Support, Responsive to service users, Engaging leadership style, Transparency and honesty, Discreet.
• Skills: IT literate, Ability to work under pressure and manage a diverse workload, Excellent communication, organisational and interpersonal skills, Confidence to challenge poor practice and ability to address difficult issues, Report writing skills, Ability to travel to work across boundaries.

Please ensure you check the email account from which you apply for all correspondence. All information regarding your application will come from apps.trac.jobs not NHS Jobs. Only those applicants who demonstrate clearly how they meet our person specification will be shortlisted for interview. As a Disability Confident Employer, we offer a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants who consider themselves to be disabled who meet the minimum (essential) criteria for the role in the person specification. If you would like your application to be considered under the Trust's guaranteed interview scheme you can indicate this in the personal information section of your online application form. Should you require a reasonable adjustment to our recruitment process please email recruitment@merseycare.nhs.uk to ensure that measures can be put in place to support you. We reserve the right to close any vacancies from further applications when we have received a minimum number of applications from which to make a shortlist. Please ensure you apply without delay if you wish to be considered for this role. The Trust expects all post holders who require an enhanced DBS for their role and work in Children’s & Young People services to subscribe to the DBS Update Service. You will be required to enrol for this service for a fee of £16 per year and maintain registration.