Band 6 Mental Health Practitioner - CAMHS Intensive Outreach Team

We work in a creative, flexible way with our partner organisation Off The Record Bristol to meet the needs of young people and families, using a DBT and Systemic focus.

As part of our service development new staff will have access to an extensive training programme including: Dialectical Behavioural Therapy, Eating Disorder Training, Non-Violent Resistance Therapy (NVR), Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT), Positive Behaviour Support (PBS), AMBIT and many more.

Main duties of the job
The post holder will provide assertive outreach to young people who have presented to hospital with self -injurious behaviour and emerging mental health problems, such as Eating Disorders and Psychosis, covering the area of North Somerset. Supported by the team and OTR colleagues to provide, outreach, containment, extended community assessments and multiagency networking.

We cover a 7 day period working a number of shifts, primarily 9am-5pm, also including crisis line management.

The post holder will provide urgent mental health assessment based on identified criteria, supported and supervised by a Band 7 clinician, in both the community and hospital settings.

The post holder will provide community interventions to manage risk and prepare young people and families for management in the community .

A proportion of the role will involve working in conjunction with colleagues in the multidisciplinary team to identify care and treatment options which enable service users to remain within their existing support/care pathways and maintain their community tenure, signposting to other services to meet their needs.

The post holder will maintain close working relationships with Community and specialist CAMHS services, Adult Community Mental Health Teams as well as the Acute Hospital Services.

Day to day leadership on service delivery and development will be provided by the Team Manager, along with senior clinicians as will caseload and management supervision.

Working for our organisation
We are AWP (Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust) a diverse organisation with over 5,000 dedicated staff providing inpatient and community-based mental health care. We provide services from a range of locations to approximately 1.8 million people living in Bath and North East Somerset (B&NES), Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Swindon, across the county of Wiltshire and in parts of Dorset. Our outstanding people promote mental health and wellbeing. The expertise and resources within AWP are dedicated to a person-centred approach for those who use our services and for all employees. We recognise that happy and fulfilled employees give better care.

At AWP we actively encourage applicants from all backgrounds; we are particularly keen to encourage applications from people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, those with disabilities and from the LGBTQ+ community. We want people to bring their unique blend of experiences, backgrounds, perspectives and knowledge to AWP, as diversity makes us stronger.

We are a progressive and dynamic service that work using evidence-based therapeutic treatments and approaches but also foreground anti-oppressive practice and diversity and equality as part of our daily working.

We have an extensive staff wellbeing offer , workshops and walks, as well robust supervision and training.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Provision of rapid access to specialist CAMHS advice and support and to enable referrers to deal more effectively with a range of mental health problems.

Increased detection of mental health problems/needs with improved care, treatment and promotion of improved understanding of and confidence in the delivery of mental health care and collaboration with all agencies involved in the care of young people and families.

Provision of targeted formal and informal learning opportunities for all staff within the primary care teams to develop their knowledge and capabilities within the mental health component of holistic care

Provision of information sign-posting and support for young people and families.

Please see attached Job Description for further details.

Person specification
Education and Qualifications
Essential criteria

Professional Registration - RMN, Social Work or relevant qualification
Desirable criteria

DBT/Systemic experience
Relevant post-registration qualification
Experience
Essential criteria

Understanding of child development and the impact of trauma
Experience of advanced assessment skills
Extensive working knowledge of the make-up of the wider health and social care community
Detailed working knowledge of how specialist CAMHS are organised and operate
Understanding of anti-oppressive practice
Desirable criteria

Experience gained in a wide variety settings
Skills and experience in educating and training other professionals
Skills
Essential criteria

Substantial experience of assessing risk and developing risk management strategies
Ability to act with high levels of diplomacy whilst maintaining the strength of relationship
Highly developed verbal communication skills
Specialist knowledge of the needs, treatment approaches and rights of children and young people
Able to articulate a detailed understanding of the relevant legal frameworks/legislation
Desirable criteria

Conversant with policies and national drivers influencing the service development
We are proud to be fostering a diverse workforce that reflects our communities. A key commitment to this is improving staff representation from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities, those from the LGBTQ+ communities, people with ‘lived-experience’ of mental health conditions and people living with disabilities,– we are a ‘Disability Confident Employer’ offering a guaranteed interview to Disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria.

We encourage applications from people who wish to work on a flexible basis, recognising that flexibility may mean a range of different working patterns and hours, we do our utmost to work with our staff to meet their needs and the needs of our service users.

Please apply to join us, we would love to hear from you. Any personal details you supply to us are kept safe in line with the General Data Protection Regulations.

Adverts normally close for application a few minutes before midnight on the closing date and we will let you know if we are offering you an interview by email via our recruitment system ‘TRAC’. We contact all applicants within 4 weeks after the closing date, so please check your emails regularly once you have submitted your application; you are welcome to contact us, via the TRAC system, if you have any queries about your application.