Senior Children and Young People Mental Health Practitioner

We are looking for highly motivated professionals to join our newly established Children and Young People’s Intensive Support Team as a Senior Mental Health Practitioner working across Central Lancashire and the Fylde Coast (Lancaster & Morecambe).

Your role will support the delivery of a young person and family focussed, accessible and flexible urgent care pathway for children and young people.

A key element of your role will be to work collaboratively with the young person and their family or carers to agree an intensive support Care Plan which promotes their resilience and reduces the likelihood of future crisis episodes.

Working collaboratively with other services you will ensure that robust plans are in place to meet the young person and family’s ongoing care and support needs.

In return you will become part of an innovative and highly motivated team providing an invaluable service to children and young people from 8am to 8pm, 7 days per week.

The service can provide opportunities for staff to work a shift pattern that includes long days (8am to 8pm), shorter days (e.g. 9am to 5pm or 10am to 6pm) or a combination of both, in order to provide the necessary level of cover required.


Main duties of the job

We are looking for practitioners who have an ethos of delivering young person centred, recovery focused services and who are able to work sensitively and non-judgementally with children, young people & families who are in crisis.

Your main duties will include working intensively with children and young people to provide a collaboratively agreed time limited package of care and to support their families and carers to provide appropriate containment during periods of high expressed emotion and crisis.

You will promote active involvement of young people, their families and other significant persons in developing collaborative care/support plans and pro-active risk management plans, whilst liaising closely with children and young people’s community mental health teams and specialist in-patient services to ensure that the least restrictive care option is provided to young people.

Locality based working will also be considered wherever possible in relation to the staff members place of residence, with opportunities for mobile working available where possible in discussion with Team Managers.

Positions available are across Lancashire and South Cumbria so there will be flexibility in terms of base and agile working involved in the roles. There will be positions available in:

Central and West Lancashire
The Fylde Coast - Lancaster & Morecambe
The Bay


Working for our organisation

Lancashire & South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust provides a range of services including secondary mental health care across this area. Specialist provision comprises inpatient child and adolescent mental health services, perinatal mental health and forensic services including low and medium secure care.

The Trust also provides a range of physical health and well-being services in the community alongside a range of partners in the Lancashire, Cumbria and Sefton area.

Lancashire & South Cumbria Foundation Trust encourages flexible working, we believe that a positive work/life balance benefits NHS employees through improved health and wellbeing. We would consider working patterns such as; term time, part time, compressed hours, flexi-time and career breaks. We encourage applicants to state clearly on their application forms this request and discuss these options at interview.

For more information please visit our website via Lancashire & South Cumbria NHS FT
Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please see attached the job description and person specification for more information about this role
Person specification
Education
Essential criteria

- Registered professional qualification in Nursing, Social Work, OT or equivalent profession.
- Evidence of post registration professional development and training

Knowledge
Essential criteria

- Detailed knowledge of child safeguarding procedures and responsibilities
- Knowledge of legislation in relation to the patient group and mental health, including the Mental Health Act and issues of capacity and consent
- Knowledge of what is meant by person centred care, recovery

Experience
Essential criteria

- Relevant post qualifying experience of working within children and families.
- Experience of carrying out comprehensive assessments and care plans.
- Experience of collaborative working with other services

Please note that further communication from Lancashire & South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust (LSCFT) will normally be to the email address given on the application form. You should also ensure that email addresses and telephone numbers are provided for your referees, to enable LSCFT to contact them.

Please ensure that you read the Person Specification attached below as your application will be measured against this document. Applications from job share partners are welcome and other forms of flexible working will be considered for all posts.

For all posts which require a Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) check please be aware of the Disclosure & Barring Service Code of Practice, a copy of which is available by logging on to the DBS website. If the post is subject to DBS disclosure, a charge will be made to the successful candidate(s).

You are advised to consider applying for LSCFT vacancies as soon as possible as in some instances vacancies are closed as soon as a sufficient number of applications have been received. If you are not invited to interview within three weeks of the closing date then please assume that on this occasion you have been unsuccessful, as it is not possible to contact all unsuccessful candidates.

Lancashire & South Cumbria Care is committed to celebrating difference as an asset and we know that recruiting talent from diverse backgrounds helps to create a more flexible, creative and effective workforce. We actively challenge discrimination and welcome applications from people regardless of age, disability (especially those with experience of accessing mental health, or Learning Disability Services or caring for someone who has accessed mental health services or Learning Disability Services), ethnicity, gender, religion or belief or sexual orientation. Our goal is for the Trust to be truly representative of the communities we serve so we are particularly keen to receive applications from people in under-represented groups. The organisation is proud to be listed as one of the Inclusive Top 50 UK Employers and our HR department holds the Lancashire LGBT Quality Mark. If there is anything you’d like to discuss in relation to your application then please ask.