Job Details:
Children and Young People's Mental Health Practitioner

Job Description

The CYP Mental Health Practitioner will support each child or young person referred into our service by gaining an understanding of the difficulties they are facing, assessing risk and working with them collaboratively to discover what support is best placed to help them at this time.

By understanding the presenting needs of children and young people, you will use your knowledge of therapeutic support to provide effective emotional wellbeing interventions.

You will play an integral part in ensuring that children and young people’s voices are heard and central to the work we do.

You will provide a blend of recovery / solution focused therapeutic interventions that supports the young person and the whole family.

This may include:

· Facilitating psychoeducation workshops for children and young people and parents / carers.

· Supporting peer group sessions

· Providing 121 sessions with children, young people and their parent / carer

· Signposting to other relevant support services

We aim to be an inclusive and supportive employer and want to make our recruitment processes accessible to everyone. If there is any way that we can support you to be the best you can be, please let us know.

Main tasks and responsibilities:

· Work alongside the Triage and Assessment Worker to identify when a piece of emotional wellbeing work can be offered to a child or young person; either as an alternative to counselling or alongside while they are waiting for support.

· Act as a single point of contact for referrals into our service, liaising with referrers regularly and processing referral speedily and effectively.

· Conduct initial assessments with children and young people and their families to gain a clear understanding of the presenting needs and to identify the best form of support.

· Ensure that risk levels for each child and young person are clearly understood and recorded, contacting referrers, families and other service providers for context where necessary.

· Follow TLC’s Safeguarding Process to ensure identified risk is managed safely, appropriately and with the needs of the child or young person as the priority.

· Ensure that all referrals are processed in line with TLC’s children and young people’s referral acceptance process.

· Work closely with the referrers to ensure that the eligibility criteria (both clinical and practical) for the service are clearly understood and communicated to families and young people themselves.

· Respond to all enquiries within agreed timescales in a sensitive manner and with full regard to equality and diversity.

· Where our service is not best placed to support the child or young person, discuss and provide alternative therapeutic options for the referrer or family to consider.

· Facilitating psychoeducation workshops for children and young people and parents / careers.

· Co-ordinate recovery-focussed peer group sessions

· Provide 1-2-1 sessions with children, young people and/or their parent / carer

· Provide advice and guidance and signposting to other relevant support services

· Support the Counselling Service Manager (CYP) to develop additional resources and materials and play an integral role in designing and implementing our new wellbeing offer

· Provide regular updates to referrers on the status and progress of each referral.

· Attend and prepare essential information for meetings with the Counselling Service Manager to analyse and plan accordingly.

· Attend training and team meetings, as required.

· Acknowledge all feedback and complaints and ensure they are all dealt with as a priority in line with TLC’s Complaints Policy and Procedure.

· Ensure individual key performance indicators are met and contribute to the delivery of service key performance indicators.

· To comply with the provisions of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) (and any re-enactments of these) when handling information concerning the Company’s employees and clients.

· Representing the service, as required at meetings.

· Completing reports for refers and other agencies as necessary.

Annual ‘Continuous Professional Development’ allowance

Generous annual leave entitlement including:

· Additional December leave (Subject to yearly board approval)

· Birthday leave

· Health & Wellbeing Day

· EDI focused Volunteering Day

Access to Employee Assistance Programme

Access to Cycle to Work scheme

Paid 30-minute lunch-break & flexible working approach

Access to social activities hosted by Bruntwood.