Senior Mental Health Practitioner

West Sussex County Council; Crawley; On-site; GBP 50,000 - 53,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Crawley weighting allowance £561 per £

Annual leave 30 days + Bank Holidays

Rewards and Benefits

Job summary

West Sussex County Council is recruiting for a Senior Mental Health Practitioner within the Thought-Full: Mental Health Support Team. The role delivers CBT-based clinical work for children and young people, supervising Educational Mental Health Practitioners and CWPs, and supporting service evaluation and development.

You will hold a caseload, provide specialist advice to staff, and collaborate with schools, clinicians, and external partners.

Qualifications

• Experience working with children and young people with mental health difficulties.
• Trained in low- or high-intensity CBT.
• Willingness to travel across the county.
• Ability to supervise and train colleagues.

Responsibilities

• Clinical work to provide psychological assessment, therapy, advice and consultation, promoting carer involvement and delivering evidence-based interventions.
• Contribute to the triage process by reviewing and screening referrals, applying clinical judgement to determine presenting need and suitability, and making informed decisions regarding appropriate care pathways, ensuring timely and effective access to the most appropriate support.
• Teaching, Training and Supervision to oversee the supervision and development of EMHP’s and CWP’s and receiving supervision to support with your own Continuous Professional Development.
• Research and Service Evaluation to collect routine outcome data and support the evaluation and development of the service.
• Management and Leadership to work alongside Senior Leadership to support the clinical delivery and oversight of your team and support with more complex clinical issues.
• General role responsibilities to follow codes of conduct, safeguarding, risk assessments, and working with professionals to promote inclusion and recovery.

Skills

Supervision

Assessment & Intervention

Specialist advice

Evidenced based

Creative & Innovative

Analytical

Job description

The Opportunity
Salary: NJC Grade 12 £49,817 to £53,051 per annum
Working Pattern: 37 hours per week, full time, 09:00-17:00 Monday to Friday
Contract: Permanent
Location: Broadfield Family Hub, Crawley. (To include Crawley weighting allowance of £561 per year)
Please note: There is a regular and intrinsic requirement to communicate in English with members of the public. You must be able to travel throughout the county including to locations that are not always accessible by public transport.
Closing date: Monday 30th November 2026
Interview date: Thursday 17th December 2026
Do you have experience of working with children and young people with mental health difficulties?
Have you trained in low or high intensity CBT?
Do you enjoy supporting, supervising, and training colleagues?
This is a great time to join WSCC as we have new opportunities for Senior Mental Health Practitioners in Thought-Full: Mental Health Support Team.
In this role, you will work closely alongside Advisory Teachers and senior members of the Thought-Full team, as well as with multi-disciplinary teams, outside agencies, clinicians, and other mental health and education professionals, to help develop and deliver the Thought-Full core functions to the schools in your area.
You will deliver clinical skills and caseload management supervision to Educational Mental Health Practitioners (EMHP) and Children’s Wellbeing Practitioners (CWP), supporting with their training and role modelling best practice.
You will also hold a caseload of young people with mild to moderate mental health problems, where you will deliver a variety of brief evidence-based interventions, primarily using a CBT model. You will use your skills and knowledge to provide specialist advice on mental health to ensure services are working closely to meet the needs of young people with a person-centred approach.
As part of this role, you will be required to complete the PGCert Supervision of Therapeutic Practice at the University of Sussex to be able to supervise EMHPs and CWPs employed within MHSTs.

Key Responsibilities Of The Role Include

• Clinical work to provide psychological assessment, therapy, advice and consultation, promoting carer involvement and delivering evidence-based interventions.
• Contribute to the triage process by reviewing and screening referrals, applying clinical judgement to determine presenting need and suitability, and making informed decisions regarding appropriate care pathways, ensuring timely and effective access to the most appropriate support.
• Teaching, Training and Supervision to oversee the supervision and development of EMHP’s and CWP’s and receiving supervision to support with your own Continuous Professional Development.
• Research and Service Evaluation to collect routine outcome data and support the evaluation and development of the service.
• Management and Leadership to work alongside Senior Leadership to support the clinical delivery and oversight of your team and support with more complex clinical issues.
• General role responsibilities to follow codes of conduct, safeguarding, risk assessments, and working with professionals to promote inclusion and recovery.

About You

We are looking for someone who is passionate about supporting the mental health of children and young people and who is self-motivated and organised, as you will need to manage your own workload and that of others.
Integrity, openness, emotional resilience and an awareness of yourself and others is vital, as you may be dealing with distressing or emotional circumstances.
You will travel independently to carry out assessments, and there will be periodic physical requirements to the role.

Key Skills

• Supervision: The post holder will be expected to supervise junior staff (Educational Mental Health Practitioners and Children's Wellbeing Practitioners) and support trainees within the team. This supervision will give clinical and caseload oversight of low-intensity CBT interventions, as well as managerial support.
• Assessment & Intervention: To work with a defined caseload of service users as part of a multi-disciplinary team, providing assessment, care planning and care delivery for service users with mild to moderate mental health difficulties, in schools. This will include the provision of highly skilled professional care, psychological interventions, mostly using low-intensity CBT, group work, clinical assessment, risk assessments / risk management, and promoting recovery and inclusion and ensuring co-production with service users, families and carers and the education staff.
• Specialist advice: To provide specialist advice to other members of staff and trainees and act as a role model.
• Evidenced based: To ensure that care activities are research based and in keeping with changes in the field of activity.
• Creative & Innovative: To contribute to the development of ideas and innovative practice and propose changes to protocols and procedures within Thought-Full and related services where required and support embedding a research culture within the service and has an ongoing commitment to developing practice through research within the team.
• Analytical: To support in the evaluation of the service and service development tasks using appropriate audit, evaluation and research tools.

About Us

Our Mental Health Support Team is made up of over 70 professionals, and we are continuing to increase our service to support the growing needs of our communities.
We currently have opportunities for Mental Health Practitioners to make a real difference in supporting Mental Health in Children. You will be working within our Mental Health Support Team (MHST) on exciting new initiatives and an important strand of the Government’s 2017 Green Paper ‘Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision’.

We Fulfil 3 Core Functions

• Delivering evidence-based interventions in education settings (primary and secondary schools and colleges) for mild to moderate mental health issues.
• Supporting the senior mental health lead in each education setting to introduce or develop their whole school or college approach.
• Giving timely advice to school and college staff, and liaising with external specialist services, to help children and young people to get the right support and stay in education.

For more information, please visit our Instagram WS Thoughtfull page and our Thriving in Education Thought-Full website

Rewards and Benefits

As an employer we recognise that it is our employees that are central to everything we do. We aim to create a supportive and dynamic working environment where employees can achieve their full potential, achieve a healthy work-life balance, and are rewarded for the work they do.
For a full list this can be found at our Rewards and Benefits page.
Upon joining us you will have access to a range of benefits including the following:
Annual leave: 30 days holiday + Bank Holidays = 38 days

Further Information

The reference number for this role is 234.
For an informal conversation or for further information regarding the role, please contact [e-mail].

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people, and vulnerable adults. This post is subject to an enhanced DBS check, five years referencing, and an occupational health check.

Equity, inclusion, and accessibility is very important to West Sussex County Council. We welcome and encourage applications from everyone, as this helps us build a diverse and talented workforce, that reflects the communities we serve. We ensure our approach to recruitment is flexible and supportive to enable all applicants to be at their best and to ensure they have the best possible chance of success.

We operate a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants that have a disability, are a veteran or are a care leaver. More information can be found on our application help page.

If you require any reasonable adjustments to support your application, please contact Kerry Joad, Recruitment Specialist, at [e-mail]