Mental Health Support Team (MHST) Senior Practitioner in Chelmsford

Redbridge Mental Health Support Team (MHST) within the Local Authority Educational Psychology Service (EPS) are aiming to recruit talented and enthusiastic Senior Practitioners to enhance our current early intervention mental health offer to schools.

MHSTs are a national initiative in response to the Government's plans to transform children and young people's mental health provision. MHSTs have three core functions:

• Delivering evidence-based interventions for children and young people with mild-moderate mental health difficulties.
• Supporting the senior mental health lead in the delivery of their whole school/college approach.
• Giving timely advice to school and college staff and signposting to external specialist services.

Our MHST sits within a well-established team of Educational Psychologists (EPs) who are committed to achieving positive outcomes for children and young people in diverse and often challenging situations. We are a dynamic team with strong connections to our schools and local community who provide support across multiple levels in the borough ranging from individual intervention and whole school involvement to borough wide campaigns.

The opportunity: Are you a mental health professional with a passion for offering thoughtful and creative early intervention support within educational settings? Our MHST has been growing since 2021 and are aiming to expand to more Redbridge schools and colleges, providing opportunity to form new relationships with educational settings, as well as maintaining our established relationships with schools.

We are seeking professionals with formal CBT training who have substantial clinical experience working with children, young people and their families. You will deliver intervention to support children, young people and their families experiencing mild to moderate mental health need and provide supervision within the wider team. This role will complement the Education Mental Health Practitioners role within the team by offering assessments and intervention to those with more complex needs within the moderate range. This will consist of both individual and group work. In addition, you will work with schools/colleges to support their whole school approach to mental health and wellbeing.

You will have opportunity to join our local authority and health care partners across the borough to support change through project work and borough wide campaigns.

Successful applicants will benefit from:

• A dynamic, friendly, and supportive team who meet regularly to share practice and enable whole team development.
• Frequent and consistent supervision.
• An induction programme tailored to your needs, career development support and an outstanding, annual service CPD programme.

Role Purpose: The postholder will work as an autonomous responsible practitioner as their training affords to:

• Deliver evidence-based interventions for children and young people in educational settings with mild to moderate mental health needs including anxiety, behaviour and low mood.
• Engage in whole school work which supports and facilitates staff in education settings to identify, and respond to issues related to mental health and wellbeing by building on existing good practice.
• Provide additional clinical support and supervision to Education Mental Health Practitioners (EMHPs).
• Attend team meetings as required and contribute to the initiation, development and implementation of new responses to changing needs and demands upon the team.
• Contribute, where appropriate, to service development and multi-agency working with our partners.
• To lead on school initiatives and assist with the day-to-day management of the service.

This post will involve working within the Redbridge Educational Wellbeing Team (REWT) which is part of the Educational Psychology Service. This post will usually involve travelling to multiple locations all over Redbridge, mainly between school settings and other locations, such as Social Services. We are offering a blend of in person and remote work. This is conducted using platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

Key accountabilities include:

• Undertake therapeutic assessment and intervention: To be able to assess needs and develop plans to support children and young people with mild to moderate mental health needs.
• Deliver outcome focused, evidence-based interventions in educational settings for children and young people experiencing mild to moderate mental health difficulties in collaboration with families and schools.
• Support good practice in assessment and intervention across the team.
• Lead group interventions alongside newly qualified and trainee EMHPs.
• Signpost children with more complex needs to a locally identified appropriate relevant service.

To contribute to whole school approaches to ensure young people are included with their mainstream setting:

• To suggest and lead on the delivery of whole-school approaches/interventions to schools and colleges, e.g. via review of school needs, project work, workshops, groups and consultation.
• To work closely with Emotional Literacy Support Assistants (ELSAs) and Senior Mental Health Leads (SMHLs) in Redbridge schools, modelling and setting up interventions.
• Share knowledge and good practice.

Engage in supervision and training: Continuing to seek and engage in continuing professional development opportunities. Actively engage in regular supervision sessions. Prepare and present case load information to supervisors within the service on an agreed and scheduled basis to ensure safe practice and the governance obligations of the practitioner, supervisor and service are delivered.

Participate in and provide knowledge and advice within consultation and multi-disciplinary meetings: Organising, attending and chairing meetings. Working with classroom teachers, teaching assistants, parents and other professionals involved with the child.

Maintain effective records and produce clear reports of interventions and inform interventions: Keeping clear, professional and coherent records of all activity in line with service protocols and use these records and outcome data to inform decision making.

To work within a multi-professional team and attend relevant meetings: Presenting research, being part of a peer support team, attending team meetings, reading groups, reading and commenting on research papers.

To participate in and contribute to the Teams professional development, support and performance management programmes as a senior practitioner in accordance with the Development Plan and Redbridge borough requirements.

Person Specification:

• Qualifications: A CYP-MH professional such as a qualified EMHP, CWP or PWP or relevant health care professional (e.g. nurse, CBT therapist, social worker, occupational therapist) with post graduate therapeutic training.
• Experience: Substantial clinical experience working with children and young people (CYP) with emotional wellbeing and mental health difficulties.
• Ability to communicate new ideas and deliver on subsequent plans.
• Ability to reflect and identify need for support.
• Resilient and adaptable with the ability to organise work within an environment of conflicting priorities whilst managing time and prioritising work to meet agreed deadlines.