Team Lead MHST

Job overview

Are you a confident and experienced mental health professional with a passion for leadership and improving outcomes for children, young people and families?

Dorset HealthCare University NHS Foundation Trust is seeking an exceptional Team Lead for our Mental Health Support Teams (MHST). This is an exciting opportunity to lead and develop an innovative service delivering early intervention and mental health support within educational settings.

We are looking for an inspiring leader with experience of managing and developing staff within children's services. You will provide visible leadership, professional confidence, creating a culture of high support and high challenge where colleagues are empowered to deliver excellent care and achieve positive outcomes.

As Team Lead, you will be committed to delivering a high-quality, timely, child and family-focused service that is compassionate, responsive and evidence based.

You will be confident in assessing and managing risk, supporting others to make sound clinical decisions, and ensuring safeguarding is embedded throughout practice. Working closely with schools, families and partner agencies, you will strengthen pathways, promote emotional wellbeing and drive service improvement.

This role will suit a proactive, collaborative team player with excellent communication and relationship-building skills. It offers a fantastic opportunity to shape services and make a difference to children, young people and families across Dorset.

Main duties of the job

As Team Lead for the Mental Health Support Team (MHST), you will provide day-to-day clinical, operational and professional leadership, ensuring the delivery of a safe, effective and child and family-focused service for children and young people within educational settings.

You will lead, supervise and develop practitioners, creating a supportive and accountable culture that enables high-quality, timely and evidence-based care. You will promote professional development, support clinical decision-making and ensure staff feel empowered to achieve the best outcomes for children and young people.

Working closely with schools, families, health colleagues, social care and voluntary sector partners, you will strengthen relationships, improve pathways and promote whole-school approaches to emotional health and wellbeing. You will also provide consultation, training and advice to education staff, parents and carers.

The postholder will ensure high standards of clinical practice, safeguarding and risk management, with care delivered in line with NICE guidance, CYP-IAPT principles and Trust policies. You will support service development, monitor performance and outcomes, and contribute to continuous quality improvement. You will also deputise for the Clinical Lead when required and play a key role in shaping the future development of the MHST service across Dorset.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

For the main duties and responsibilities for this role please read the attached job description and person specification. When completing your application please ensure your supporting statement reflects the criteria set out in these documents by showing how your experience and skills apply to this post.

We understand that using AI can be a useful and supportive tool when completing your application. However, we have also seen an increase in the over-reliance of AI tools which is negatively impacting applications as they remove candidate’s individuality, and it becomes much harder to get a sense of who you are and your authentic experience. If you do use AI, it should be used to enhance your application and not to create your supporting statement in its entirety. If we suspect you have used AI to create your supporting statement and this does not match your experience, we may withdraw your application.

As part of our vision to have a skilled, diverse and caring workforce, Dorset HealthCare offers support for people getting into work. We offer an employability service to support individuals with application writing, interview skills and other employment support. If you would like or know of anyone who would value this support, please do contact dhc.wideningparticipation@nhs.net

Please note visa sponsorship for this role is unfortunately not available. Ensure you hold valid right to work in the UK and will not require sponsorship if successful.

Applicant requirements

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.