Family Safeguarding Mental Health Practitioner - Portsmouth

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Family Safeguarding Mental Health Practitioner to join the Family Safeguarding Adult Team, working closely with Children’s Social Care colleagues to support whole‑family change and improve outcomes for children. We welcome applications from Social work, RMN and professionally qualified backgrounds with an up to date registration.

The Family Safeguarding Adult Team is integrated into Children's Social Care services, providing intervention with parents & carers to actively support change, with the intention to help more children to live safely at home. The key focus is to work collaboratively and in partnership with families to tackle vulnerability and their individual needs. This includes providing specialist advice and guidance to professionals and undertaking direct work with parents / carers to address their assessed mental health, substance use and domestic abuse needs. This aims to improve their parenting skills and capacity to achieve and sustain positive change. This also includes liaising with established adult services where additional specialist provision is required.

In this role you will:

• Assess, plan and deliver mental health interventions to parents/carers where mental health impacts parenting capacity
• Provide specialist mental health assessments, formulation and risk assessment
• Work collaboratively within a Team Around the Worker and multi‑disciplinary framework
• Respond flexibly to crisis presentations and support safety planning where required
• Contribute to child and adult safeguarding processes, including MARAC
• Deliver restorative and strengths‑based interventions, including Motivational Interviewing
• Offer advice, consultation and guidance to Children’s Social Care professionals
• Maintain high‑quality records and contribute to reports for reviews, conferences and court
• Participate in supervision, reflective practice, learning reviews and quality assurance
• Contribute to workforce development, including delivering training where appropriate

The ideal candidate will be a confident, reflective practitioner with experience of working with adults with complex mental health needs and an understanding of the impact of adult needs on children and parenting. You will need to have:

• Relevant professional qualification and registration (e.g. Social Work, HCPC, RMN or equivalent)
• Experience working in mental health services (community or inpatient)
• Experience of working with complexity, including domestic abuse and substance use
• Strong understanding of adult and children’s safeguarding
• Ability to work autonomously and within a multi‑professional setting
• Trauma‑informed, strengths‑based and restorative approach
• Excellent communication, analytical and organisational skills
• Ability to manage a caseload in a busy, emotionally demanding environment
• Strong IT and recording skills

Please ensure that you download and read the full job profile attached for the details and expectations of this role, paying particular attention to the section 'Who is the person' as you will need to refer to this when completing your Personal statement.

About Portsmouth City Council: Portsmouth City Council is a unique organisation, committed to making a difference, and is guided by core values that set who we are as people, what we stand for, and how we act. We are committed to our values of respect, integrity, collaboration, inclusivity and being people-focussed. These values set out how we can contribute to the success of the council and our own success as individuals.

Working arrangements: This role is fully office based; there is no Hybrid working.

Contact Details for an Informal Discussion: If you have any questions, or would like an informal discussion about the role, please email: Claire Baker.

Application process: We anonymise applications during application & shortlisting to ensure only relevant information is considered. As part of your application, we ask that you complete a personal statement, this statement is crucial and is where you must demonstrate how you meet the requirements of the job against each of the points described in the 'Who is the Person' points on the Job Profile using examples from your experience or transferable skills. This might be through qualifications or descriptive examples from your work / personal experience. You will need to explain any gaps in your career history within the last 5 years - this is essential for all safeguarding roles.

We are a disability confident employer and Armed Forces Covenant gold standard. More information can be found at Equality, diversity and inclusion - Careers portal. We are committed to offering an interview to all those candidates that qualify under one of our commitments and meet the minimum criteria; however, for roles that receive a large number of applications, this is not always possible, and we will select the candidates that best meet the minimum criteria.

You will need to demonstrate that you have the Right to Work in the UK. No post will be offered without it. We are unable to offer sponsorship for this role.

Safeguarding: Portsmouth City Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, and young people, and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. Every post is subject to PCC and Portsmouth Safeguarding Children Partnership safer recruitment procedures. Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) at Standard/Enhanced level will be required prior to any offer of employment and this post is exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. Please read the relevant DBS privacy notice before submitting any information.