Advanced Mental Health Practitioner

Job summary

Are you an experienced Mental Health professional wanting to work within a supportive specialist CAMHS team?

Will you thrive working within a multi-disciplinary system to provide a high quality mental health service to young people in Berkshire?

This is an exciting opportunity to join our specialised Berkshire CAMHS Link team as an Advanced Mental Health Practitioner. This is an 18 month fixed term contract post for 22.5 hours per week. The post is based at Erlegh House in Reading and will support delivery of high quality trauma informed systemic care to children and young people across Berkshire.

The role requires a confident and experienced mental health professional who can demonstrateboth experience of working with and a genuine interest in the health and wellbeing of children and young people with complex needs. They will be well organised, have excellent communication and clinical leadership skills, and be familiar with the demands and working environments of Social Care, Health, Education and other partner agency settings.

You will need to have a recognised professional registration and demonstrable experience working within Children and Young People's mental health services.

Main duties of the job

• To deliver a high-quality trauma-informed mental health service to children and young people across Berkshire.
• To deliver interventions that are systemic in nature and develop the professional family network to support them to work therapeutically with the young people in their care.
• To provide specialist assessment and therapeutic interventions, offer consultation on children's care to non-clinical colleagues and to other, non-professional carers, working within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the team's policies and procedures.
• To work in a trauma informed way. This means facilitating and collaborating in multiagency formulation meetings, devising multiagency intervention plans and offering ongoing supervision and coaching to professionals so that interventions are therapeutic, streamlined and developmentally appropriate for the young person.
• To utilise research skills to contribute to audit, policy and service development and research. To propose and implement policy changes within the area served by the team

About us

Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust is a specialist mental health and community health services trust. Rated 'outstanding' by the CQC, we're committed to providing the best possible care to people across Berkshire. As an employer, we're committed to offering an inclusive and compassionate environment where our people share in a sense of belonging and are supported to flourish.

Our values at Berkshire Healthcare are:

• Caring for and about you is our top priority
• Committed to providing good quality, safe services
• Working Together with you to develop innovative solutions

Your wellbeing is important to us. Some of the benefits of working for us include:

• Flexible working options to support work-life balance
• 27 days' annual leave rising with service + opportunity to buy and sell
• Generous NHS pension scheme
• Excellent learning and career development opportunities
• 'Cycle to Work' and car leasing scheme including electric vehicles
• Access to a range of wellbeing tools and services
• Discounts at hundreds of popular retailers and restaurants
• Staff networks for race, diversity, disabilities, the environment and armed forces community to support equality
• Generous maternity, paternity, adoption and special leave
• Free parking across Trust sites

Job responsibilities

The must haves for this role:

1. A core qualification and recognised professional registration e.g. NMC, HCPC

2. Experienced in working with Children and Young Peoples mental health services

3. Demonstrable experience in working with mental health complex needs

For further information about the role, please see attached job description and person specification.

Your application is your opportunity to demonstrate to us how you meet the requirements of the role. We recognise that AI tools can support accessibility, equity and confidence for applicants. However, its important that examples and responses given in your supporting statement genuinely reflect your own experience and abilities, as these will be explored further during the selection process. AI must not be used to provide misleading or false information during any stage of the application journey.

In addition to explaining how you meet the person specification, you must complete your employment history for at least the last five years. Any experience, skills or responsibilities referenced in your supporting statement should be evidenced within your employment history. Applications that do not include sufficient employment history to support the experience claimed may not be shortlisted.

We're committed to equal opportunities and welcome applications from all sections of the community. Our commitment to inclusion is reflected in our accreditations: Race Equality Matters Silver Trailblazer, Neurodiversity in Business Corporate Member, Disability Confident Leader, Carer Confident Level 2, and the Armed Forces Covenant Gold Award. Reasonable adjustments will be provided to candidates as needed.

We welcome a conversation about flexibility and any other questions you may have. Please don't hesitate to contact Karen Jacobs, Team Lead on her email: [email protected] who'll be delighted to help.

Please note, if we receive a high number of applications, we may close this role earlier than the advertised closing date, so please submit your application as soon as possible.

Person specification

Education, Qualifications or Training

Essential

• Recognised and relevant qualification as below: Registered Mental Health Nurse or Registered Social Worker or Occupational Therapist or Speech and Language Therapist.
• Registration with NMC, HCPC or other recognised professional body

Continuous Professional Development

Essential

• Evidence of continuing professional development relevant to professional registration and CAMHS practice

Previous Experience

Essential

• Significant post-qualifying experience of undertaking comprehensive assessment of mental health needs, developing care plans and offering appropriate support based on formulation of presenting difficulties.
• Experience of working with service users with high-risk presentations and undertaking risk assessment and risk management plans.
• Experience of hard-to-reach diverse community groups and individuals with emerging complex needs, dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities and safeguarding.
• Experience of working effectively in a multi-disciplinary team and multi-agency environment
• Experience of working within mental health settings supporting children, adolescents and their families

Desirable

• Experience of providing supervision or leadership to others
• Experience of contributing to service improvement initiatives.

Knowledge, skills and abilities

Essential

• Knowledge and skills to assess acute mental health crisis and deliberate self-harm at Getting Risk/Tier 3 levels
• Demonstrates up to date knowledge of legislation and national strategies and requirements for CAMHS.
• Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance as appropriate, to support and maintain clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour
• Well-developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups
• Ability to take clinical responsibility for patient care and treatment
• Ability to work to timescales and comfortably cope in pressurised situations, applying practical problem-solving skills in everyday and complex situations
• Ability to work autonomously and effectively in a team, reprioritising work to reflect changing needs
• Competent IT skills and the ability to navigate around various systems and software packages, such as Outlook, databases, RiO, Microsoft Office and interne

Desirable

• Ability to motivate and inspire others and to support others to develop key competencies

Additional Requirements

Essential

• Ability and willingness to work in a flexible way to meet service needs