Senior Mental Health Practitioner

Job overview

Are you a registered Mental Health Nurse seeking a new part time challenge in a supportive team environment?

The CAMHS SPA is a centralised service to support and screen referrals for Children and Young People across  Wiltshire CAMHS and BaNES CAMHS teams. We are recruiting following the promotion of the previous post-holder.

We are the first point of contact for all new referrals and enquiries; we support self, parent/carer and professional referrals. Our robust system of working ensures all contact is reviewed clinically and timely to ensure the appropriate support is offered at the right time by the right service.

As a member of the team, you will be supported by a dynamic and enthusiastic team who are passionate about meeting the needs of children, young people and parents/carers. The role requires working alongside our colleagues in the core CAMHS teams, other professionals in wider CAMHS and those external to the service.

Whilst the role can be challenging, the support and experience you will be surrounded with creates a safe positive working environment.

We embrace learning from our colleagues via regular training and supervision to contribute to our up to date knowledge.  The role extends itself to regularly connect with education settings to support staff in understanding mental health and how to best meet the needs of CYP.

Main duties of the job

• Provide SPA support through an individualised job plan to cover the needs of the service.
• Provide phone and digital consultations to CYP, parent/carers and professionals to assess the current mental health presentation and additional wider needs to consider the most appropriate pathway of support.
• Utilise the internal network of CAMHS professional knowledge and expertise to support clinician decision making
• When required, triage/screen referrals with the support of a senior clinician.
• Provide early help consultations to education and school nursing team to consider emotional wellbeing needs of students.

We will need you to possess excellent interpersonal/communication skills; be calm and organised to embrace the changes that can occur in the SPA.  You will need to be efficient in completing documentation and have a sound working knowledge of Excel and Word.

As a trust all staff are required to undertake 4-6 weekly clinical and managerial supervision; as a team we have implemented monthly peer supervision to actively learn from one another; along with adherence to structured quarterly safeguarding supervision.  Also, importantly we value our own wellbeing; we do this by engaging in regular team wellbeing activities to allow the time to pause and enjoy coming together as a team.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

We hope that the advert has given you a clear understanding of the skills we are seeking and the opportunity at hand. You will need to use the “supporting statement” element of your application form to demonstrate your suitability for this role and you should refer to the job description, person specification and the guidance notes attached to this role to help you tailor your application.

The essential and desirable criteria will be used to shortlist for interview, and you should ensure that you refer to these within your application to increase your chances of being selected for interview.

Please note: The role will require you  working as part of an on-call out of hours rota (pro-rota if part-time): for example, if full-time this can be approximately seven days every eighteen weeks, with a buddy system in place to provide support and sharing of the rota. This also includes on-call managerial supervision and ad-hoc supervision support if required.

All out of hours work is supported by an On-call manager, Consultant Psychiatrist, a Senior Mental Health Practitioner, CAMHS Helpline Service (provided by qualified staff) and hospital liaison staff.

Please do contact me should you want to talk through the role and find out more about the SPA: Sarah Reeves email: [email protected]  Mobile: 07876 397 748