MHST Senior Clinician and Supervisor - South-West Essex

NELFT NHS Foundation Trust; Basildon; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A reputable NHS Trust in Basildon is seeking a Senior Mental Health Practitioner responsible for leading a clinical team, supervising trainees, and delivering interventions for children and young people experiencing mental health issues. The ideal candidate must be registered and have experience in psychological therapies, along with a strong understanding of CBT. Flexibility in working hours is encouraged, along with a supportive work environment.

Benefits

Flexible working opportunities

Supportive health and wellbeing initiatives

Higher Cost of Living allowance

Qualifications

• Registered/Accredited Clinical/Counselling Psychologist or equivalent.
• Minimum of 2 years delivering evidence-based psychological interventions.
• Experience in managing a caseload and providing supervision.

Responsibilities

• Supervise junior staff and deliver clinical interventions.
• Work with schools on intervention plans.
• Manage a caseload of youths with mental health difficulties.

Skills

Delivering workshops to professionals

Experience with children and young people

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

Education

UK Professional Registration

Formal CBT training or equivalent

Job description

This job is brought to you by Jobs/Redefined, the UK's leading over-50s age inclusive jobs board.

Joining #TeamNELFT means you'll become part of a welcoming and supportive working environment. We’re CQC rated Good, and we want you to join us on the journey towards an Outstanding rating. NELFT has sites across North East London, Essex, Kent and Medway. We provide community and mental healthcare services to adults and children within these areas.

The Trust has award winning equality and diversity initiatives and staff health and wellbeing activities. We invest heavily in your development, because when you are valued and supported, we provide the best care to our patients. We are a Level 3 Disability Confident Leader, have been featured in the Working Families Top 10 Employers benchmark for five consecutive years, and we have achieved a Carers UK Level 1 Accreditation. Along with our staff networks and training opportunities, we work hard to embed a just and compassionate culture here at NELFT.

Find out more about NELFT careers and what makes our Trust a great place to work, in this video

Job overview

NELFT is the largest providers of Mental Health Support Teams (MHST’s) in England.

The MHST’s deliver evidence-based individual and group interventions in educational settings for children experiencing mild to moderate mental health difficulties aged 5 to 18 years old. The teams also have a strong focus on whole school approaches to improve mental health outcomes for children and young people.

The South-West Essex MHST covers a large geographical area including, Basildon, Brentwood and Billericay and Thurrock. We are an early intervention and prevention evidence-based service and as a team we are supportive and passionate in what we deliver. We are a friendly team of professionals who come from multidisciplinary backgrounds. We recognise the needs for a healthy work life balance, and we will consider flexible working applications in line with the trust policies and process. We encourage Continual Professional Development (CPD) and are keen to support our staff to grow and progress.

We are a welcoming, compassionate and considerate team, that work incredibly hard to support one another to improve the mental health of our community.

The successful candidate will receive an additional 5% Higher Cost of Living allowance on top of their wage.

Main duties of the job

We are looking for an experienced Mental Health Practitioner with a UK Professional Registration to join our MHST.

In this post, you will be a senior clinical team member, holding a clinical caseload and supervising junior staff and trainee EMHPs. You will work alongside partner agencies to develop and co-produce training materials and support the delivery of whole school approach models for mental health.

• Work in partnership with schools CYP, and families in the development of plans for the intervention and agreed outcomes.
• Support the Locality Clinical Lead with the formulation and treatment and management plans for schools, parents, CYP using a range of specialist psychological interventions appropriate to the service, individual and group.
• Effectively manage a caseload of CYP with mild to moderate mental health difficulties, complete thorough assessments, risk assessments, care plans and reviews.
• Provide caseload management and supervision to Trainee Education Mental Health Practitioners, Education Mental Health Practitioner's and Senior Mental Health Practitioner's.
• Support in the delivery of evidence-based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).
• To work as part of a Multi-Disciplinary Team within your locality but also with other MHSTs within Essex.
• To be able to work as part of a team and autonomously.

Working for our organisation

Our Values 2025 - 2030

Working with our colleagues, patients and carers we have co-produced three new values that we aim to embed within our culture here at NELFT.

• We are kind.
• We are respectful.
• We work together with our communities.

These three values help us to strive to provide the best care by the best people.

Base

The South-West Essex MHST have a nominal base of Phoenix House in Basildon. As agile workers the successful applicant will be required to travel to various NELFT offices and educational settings across the MHST’s.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

We are seeking to recruit senior clinicians to specifically support the supervision of the Education Mental Health Practitioners (EMHP) within the MHSTs. These post holders must have a good understanding of CBT and have clinically practiced using this model. We want our post holder to be able to lead by example in clinical practice and be able to support junior staff to develop their skills and knowledge of the evidence bases for our low intensity interventions.

The Senior Clinician will be a graduate qualified health care professional, and ideally have formal CBT training for example:

• Qualified CBT Therapist
• Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT)
• Children and Young People-IAPT (CYP-IAPT)

Or will have substantial Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) clinical experience which includes CPD in delivering evidence-based psychological interventions.

Applicants need to be fully registered/accredited with the appropriate professional or regulatory body (e.g. HCPC, NMC, BABCP).

This Senior Clinician and Supervisor role will work closely with the MHST Locality Clinical Leads, the MHST Operational Manager, and other clinical colleagues/partner agencies.

The role will include supervisory responsibility, the post holder will also deliver clinical interventions, both targeted and under the Whole School Approach, to maintain professional registrations and continue to develop. The post holder will need to remain current in evidence-based interventions and have a good working knowledge of CBT. Supervisors are also key to service development in progressing and adapting interventions to ensure we are an inclusive service and contributing to research and development of the MHST’s nationally.

Please see person specification and job description for full details and responsibilities required for this role.

Certificates of Sponsorship

Although we are a registered sponsor organisation, we are unable to offer sponsorship for all job roles. Please check your eligibility under the UKVI points-based system. When calculating the basic salary for sponsorship, HCAS (High-Cost Area Supplement) is not included to ensure fairness and consistency within our Trust.

Use of AI

Please see attached document regarding acceptable use of AI during the recruitment process.

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria

• Registered/Accredited Clinical/Counselling Psychologist, Family Therapist, Drama Therapist, Art Psychotherapist, CBT Therapist, Child & Adolescent Psychotherapist, IPT-a therapist
• Qualified and registered RMN/RGN, Health Visitor and completed further training/experience at minimum PgDip level in delivering evidence-based psychological interventions.

Desirable criteria

• Completed or currently undertaking CYP PT PgCert in supervision of EMHPs/CWPs

Experience

Essential criteria

• At least 2 years' experience (including training period) of delivering evidence-based psychological interventions for low mood, anxiety and behaviour problems with children and young people.
• Experience of working with moderate presentations and neurodivergence
• Experience of providing caseload management and clinical supervision

Desirable criteria

• Experience working with or in educational settings
• Previous experience of providing supervision to trainees (EMHP/CWP or APs or ClinPsy trainees)
• Experience of providing clinical interventions in different cultural contexts

Skills

Essential criteria

• Experience of and ability to deliver workshops to professionals, young people, and/or parents/carers

Other

Essential criteria

• Access to own vehicle and be able to travel efficiently throughout the area

Benefits

We believe in bringing your authentic and best self to work, in order to deliver the best care to our patients. We are committed to supporting our employees holistically. Here is a snapshot of what is on offer at NELFT:

• A long-standing and award-winning approach to equality and diversity with supportive networks for ethnic minority staff, staff with disabilities or long term/chronic conditions and LGBT staff.
• A commitment to supporting colleagues to achieve a work life balance, through flexible working opportunities and our efforts to support our working parents and carers. This has resulted in us being recognised as a 'Top 10 Family Friendly Employer' from the Working Families Charity.
• Proactive health and wellbeing support, including access to our employee assistance programme, staff psychological support, individual wellbeing conversations and a network of health and wellbeing ambassadors.
• Detailed information about our wellbeing and benefits offer can be found in this link.

As a flexible working friendly organisation, we want to be sure that you can work in a way that is best for us and for our patients, and for you. Speak to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement whether that's a job share, part time hours or another flexible pattern.

Supporting our Armed Forces

We recognise the valuable contribution that the Armed Forces community make to our organisation. We have signed the Armed Forces Covenant and achieved Gold Award under the Armed Forces Employer Recognition Scheme. We have supportive policies, guaranteed interview schemes for veterans. reservists and military spouses and give additional leave to our Reservists so that they can attend their annual camp.

Equal opportunities employer

We are committed to equal opportunities and diversity and positively encourage applications from all sections of the community regardless of any protected characteristic.

Disability Confident employer

We are a Disability Confident employer and have made the pledge to commit to employing more people with disabilities. If you require this application in another format i.e. Braille or audio tape please contact the recruitment team on 0300 300 1530 or email [e-mail].

Correspondence with us

You are advised to regularly check your emails (including any junk mail/spam folders) for correspondence related to this post.

As part of our recruitment process, we may be required to share information you provide on the application form with NHS Counter Fraud Authority (NHSCFA) and/or other organisations for the purpose of the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of fraud or any other unlawful activity affecting the NHS. We also use third party providers to check and verify your qualifications who may be contacting you on our behalf to verify the same.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

Applicant requirements

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Documents to download

• MHST B7 Senior Clinician & Supervisor Job Description (PDF, 580.5KB)
• Candidate Recruitment Pack (PDF, 671.2KB)
• Acceptable Use of AI in Recruitment (PDF, 3.9MB)