LD/ASC Mental Health Specialist

Merseycare; Runcorn; On-site; GBP 30,000 - 50,000; Full time

Job summary

An exciting opportunity awaits in the Halton CAMHS team for a skilled practitioner to enhance the mental health of children and young people. In this vital role, you will lead multi-agency plans and deliver therapeutic interventions tailored to meet diverse needs. As a key member of the CYPMHS, you will ensure high-quality, coordinated care while collaborating with various health and educational partners. This position not only allows you to make a significant impact on young lives but also offers a chance to engage in service evaluation and training, fostering a collaborative and inclusive environment. If you are passionate about mental health and eager to contribute to meaningful change, this role is perfect for you.

Qualifications

• Experience in mental health assessments and interventions with children and young people.
• Ability to communicate complex clinical information effectively.

Responsibilities

• Provide specialized clinical advice and support to children and young people.
• Deliver high-quality service and care in collaboration with multidisciplinary teams.

Skills

Mental Health Assessment

Therapeutic Interventions

Communication Skills

Clinical Supervision

Case Management

Risk Assessment

Consultation Skills

Cultural Competence

Education

Core Professional Qualification (Nurse, Social Work, Occupational Therapy)

Masters or Equivalent Experience

Professional Registration

Qualification in Clinical Supervision

Job description

Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust celebrates diversity and promotes equal opportunities; we are committed to challenging and eliminating racism and other forms of discrimination and advancing and promoting equality of opportunity in the provision of services and creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We believe that everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and respect.

We take positive action to support disadvantaged groups and also particularly encourage applications from ethnic minorities, disabled and LGBTQIA+ people that are under-represented in our workforce. Furthermore, we welcome applications from reservists and ex-armed forces personnel as we recognise the benefits of the values, skills, training and experience that they bring to their work with us. We encourage all applicants to share their equality information with us.

Job overview

An exciting opportunity has arisen in the Halton CAMHS team (child and adolescent mental health services) for an experienced, skilled, and passionate practitioner to support the mental health of children and young people with ASC / LD. As a specialist practitioner, you will be responsible for leading multi-agency plans to support CYP.

You will deliver therapeutic intervention to meet the needs of CYP and complete appropriate safety plans. As a specialist practitioner, you will be key in developing and supporting local pathways of care and support and evaluation of services and training to the wider system. You will also offer consultation, which includes working with partner health organisations, CSC, Education, and third sector organisations, and is a very important aspect of our work.

The post holder will be a key member of the CYPMHS in delivering a highly specialised clinical service to Children and Young People and their families and carers with LD/ASC and mental health co-morbidity and the wider multidisciplinary team – they will be integral to ensuring efficient, effective, co-ordinated, and responsive high-quality service and care are delivered. The post holder will also be required to be proactive with audit, research, education, and training to ensure the delivery of the quality strategy within CYPMHS is incorporated into systems and processes.

This post is subject to an enhanced with children’s and adult’s barred list Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) Check.

Main duties of the job

As a specialist practitioner, the post holder will provide a specialised role in the development and implementation of services and care pathways for children and young people with mental health [CYPMH] and Learning Disability / Autistic Spectrum Conditions [ASC] problems within the THRIVE Framework for service delivery.

The post holder will be expected to provide specialist interventions, advice, consultancy, and supervision to both colleagues and external partner agencies in line with THRIVE.

As the post is identified within the CYPMH strategy, it is expected the role will continue to develop in line with national and local initiatives.

The post holder will demonstrate an attitude which respects and values service users and their carers. The post holder will embrace the core values of the organisation and adopt the principles of Recovery and THRIVE.

Working for our organisation

Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 11 million people.

We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction, and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities.

At the heart of all we do is our commitment to perfect care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable, and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

1. Provide highly specialised clinical advice and support to CYP, families, and carers and the wider multidisciplinary team – this will include clinical assessment, diagnostic skills, non-medical prescribing where appropriate, and implementation of management and treatment plans.
2. Be responsible for the delivery of the service within the area.
3. Work cooperatively and collaboratively with other services/stakeholders to enable service users to be treated in the most appropriate setting.
4. Ensure that the team provides a high-quality service to its clients by providing caseload and clinical supervision.
5. Ensure that teams work proactively to deliver anticipatory and maintenance care, providing a responsive service to CYP, Families, and Carers with both planned and unplanned care needs.
6. Maintain clinical credibility by providing clinical care and supporting members of the team within the clinical environment.
7. Participate in the development of caseload management across the mental health and health economy.
8. Provide leadership and mentoring to those staff developing into a caseload management role.
9. Act as an advocate and champion for CYP and Families/Carers in a variety of forums and professional groups and challenge attitudes and behaviour.
10. Implement plans for the team including rotas and schedules/working patterns to ensure business continuity.
11. Practice autonomously and demonstrate evidence-based clinical decision-making.
12. Provide clinical expertise and knowledge to the wider healthcare when managing complex and highly complex situations.
13. Assess patient/client conditions and consider a range of options when delivering complex and highly complex clinical care.
14. Formulate and follow holistic assessment of health needs, develop specialist individualised care plans to fulfil those needs, with the involvement of CYP and Families/Carers.
15. Implement and evaluate care delivery for CYP and Families/Carers with identified needs.
16. Ensure that all clinical activity provided by the team directly reflects the core objectives of health promotion, supported self-care, disease-specific management, management of long-term conditions, and end-of-life/palliative care.
17. Set objectives by which performance will be monitored.
18. Work with team leader and service lead to deliver local based services, by participating in meetings and communicating the outcomes to staff.
19. Support team leader to provide reports to the service lead on staff and patient activity as requested.
20. Work in collaboration with others to support practice development and service modernisation.
21. Contribute to the development of role and service redesign.
22. Actively participate in policy and service development authoring protocols as required.
23. Provide induction to the local working environment, and policies for new team members and students.
24. Support team leader with PACE reviews of team members.
25. Contribute to the development of policy and services to reflect local needs.
26. Ensure that administration and clerical duties are appropriately delegated to clerical support officers.
27. Provide data that supports the monitoring of team contract and objectives.
28. Participate in audits and research, as required.
29. Participate in individual and group supervision.
30. Support with the implementation of mentorship and clinical supervision with the team.
31. Ensure that record keeping within the team is consistent with professional standards.
32. Initiate training and development of team members. Monitor and maintain standards of patient care delivery, including maintaining and monitoring of clinical competency and standards of record keeping.
33. In conjunction with the team leader and service lead, ensure systems are in place for the ongoing review and assessment of care provision and delivery.
34. Work within guidelines to identify and manage risk, reporting identified risks to the team leader and service lead.
35. Report any incidents as per Trust policies and support or undertake any investigations as delegated by the team leader and service lead.
36. Monitor and ensure that the quality of care delivered by the team is evidence-based and supported by best practice, through the use of audit, caseload, and clinical supervision.
37. Participate in CYP and Families/Carers satisfaction reporting to improve patient care.
38. Maintain registration in line with professional bodies.
39. Provide support to team members holding responsibility for mentoring students.
40. Support with the identification of skills deficits within the team and identify methods of addressing these to support service delivery, improvement, and development.

Person specification

TRAINING AND QUALIFICATIONS

• Core professional qualification in registered nurse, social work, Occupational therapy
• Masters or equivalent level of experience
• Up to date Professional Registration (to be maintained)
• Qualification in clinical supervision

EXPERIENCE

• Experience of specialist mental health assessments and therapeutic interventions with children and young people with mental health problems and their families
• Highly skilled in the ability to communicate effectively, verbally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinical sensitive information to clients, their families, carers, and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS
• Experience of delivering teaching, training, and supervision
• Experience in consultation to other professional and non-professional groups
• Experience of working with a wide variety of patient groups that reflect the full range of clinical severity including a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse, and the threat of physical abuse.
• Experienced in and the ability to provide case management supervision for CAMHS staff, students, and other service groups/team professionals as required

KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS

• Advanced knowledge and skills in the complete range of approaches within special field of work as required to meet the needs of different patients and settings.
• Advanced level of knowledge of the mental health needs of children and adolescents.
• Experience in providing complex risk assessments
• Must demonstrate ability to be self-reflective and to organise own supervision appropriately
• Ability to work within a culturally diverse community in a wide variety of contexts including highly specialist skills for working in settings outside the clinic.
• Advanced knowledge and skills in providing consultation to other professionals and non-professional groups.
• Ability to take full clinical responsibility for patient care and treatment, both as a care co-ordinator and within the context of a multi-disciplinary team.

VALUES

• Accountability
• Support
• High professional standards
• Responsive to service users
• Engaging leadership style
• Transparency and honesty
• Discreet
• Change oriented

Please ensure you check the email account from which you apply for all correspondence. All information regarding your application will come from apps.trac.jobs not NHS Jobs.

Only those applicants who demonstrate clearly how they meet our person specification will be shortlisted for interview.

As a Disability Confident Employer, we offer a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants who consider themselves to be disabled who meet the minimum (essential) criteria for the role in the person specification. If you would like your application to be considered under the Trust’s guaranteed interview scheme you can indicate this in the personal information section of your online application form.

Should you require a reasonable adjustment to our recruitment process please email [e-mail] to ensure that measures can be put in place to support you.

We reserve the right to close any vacancy earlier than advertised in exceptional circumstances once we have received a high volume of applications.

The Trust expects all post holders who require an enhanced DBS for their role to subscribe to the DBS Update Service. You will be required to enrol for this service for a fee of £13 per year and maintain registration.

Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.