Trainee Mental Health Wellbeing Practitioner

Job overview

We are excited to announce that we have been awarded funding from Health Education England to offer the opportunity to come and train with us at Sussex Partnership Foundation Trust (SPFT) as a Mental Health Wellbeing Practitioner (MHWP). Sussex Partnership is a mental health trust, offering care across Sussex to adults, older adults and children with mental health problems. The MHWP posts are new national roles based in our community mental health teams and our emotional wellbeing services (EWS). Those successful in the posts will be trained to offer psychologically-informed interventions to people in our community mental health teams, alongside our multi-disciplinary colleagues. Your will be part of our psychology and psychological therapies team, receiving high quality supervision and continued professional development and support. If you are successful in this post you will receive NHS funded training at Sussex University, and a salary with us at Sussex Partnership for the placement element of your training. The years training will then equip you to apply for qualified MHWP posts within our trust.

Please note, you cannot train or apply for another NHS England training (including clinical psychology training) within two years of taking on an MHWP role

Main duties of the job

There has been recent national recognition that MHWP posts can play a key role in the provision of psychological therapies in our community mental health teams. These are multi disciplinary teams that work with people in the community and you will be providing intensive short term therapeutic interventions within the context of the wider team.

There are 9 posts which will be located in different community mental health teams across Brighton and Hove and East Sussex.  You will all be interviewed as one cohort, but it will be possible to express a preference for a placement location at interview stage. We will be offering a centralised recruitment process where candidates who are successfully shortlisted will be invited to a single interview. Successful candidates will then be offered a post based on their preferences.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

This is a training role within adult community mental health services. The post-holder will be enrolled in a graduate certificate or postgraduate certificate training delivering the national curriculum for Mental Health and Wellbeing Practitioners. The post-holder will attend all elements of the programme of study and progress successfully through assessments of competence and attainment. In the remaining part of the week they will work as a trainee in the service, under close supervision and regular course assessment of practice competence. They will work within the limits of their experience and assessed competence for their stage of training: • To work alongside service users, families, carers and multi-disciplinary team members to co-ordinate care, supporting collaborative decision-making about care and treatment. • To deliver a set of wellbeing-focused psychologically-informed interventions, aligned to cognitive-behavioural principles, based on the best evidence available, that address problems often experienced by people with severe mental health problems.