In line with the government’s priority to increase access and availability of mental health and wellbeing support for children and young people, the new Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) provide an exciting opportunity to deliver evidence-based early interventions for children and young people, working across both educational settings and healthcare sectors in England.

Barnet Council’s Family Services have been successful in gaining further funding to expand existing MHSTs. This is part of the government’s green paper ambitions to transform mental health support in England. This will build on the prevention and early intervention work in schools and is a key and permanent part of developing early help support within Barnet’s Integrated Clinical Services (BICS) for children and young people’s mental health.

BICS, including the MHSTs, is provided by the local authority. The successful applicant will be part of a multi-disciplinary team of clinicians offering a range of mental health and wellbeing interventions to children, young people, and their families in one of Barnet’s Child & Family Early Help Hubs and will be based primarily in schools in the East of the London Borough of Barnet.

Our new MHST will include four Education Mental Health Practitioner (EMHP) trainees, who will play a key role as originally proposed in Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision: a Green Paper. They will have the responsibility for delivering schools’ overarching approach to providing mental health and wellbeing support for children and young people.

EMHPs report to Higher Level Therapists/Supervisors who, while having their own caseload, are crucial to supporting the EMHPs complete their training in the first year and delivering a service. MHSTs are overseen by a Clinical Manager and supported by a full-time Administrator and an Assistant Psychologist.

Successful candidates will be offered a fully funded full-time educational programme specifically for the role, gaining credits towards a diploma level qualification, plus guaranteed employment on completion of training, with a starting salary as qualified projected to be based on the NHS AfC Band 5 scale (Band 4 during training year).

Successful candidates will need to pass the training course to remain employed with BICS as qualified EMHPs.

To be successful, all applicants must demonstrate in their application the ability to work at degree level and have an equivalent level of relevant experience, with a proven record of previous learning or formal study in child development, wellbeing or mental health. It is also essential that applicants have relative experience of working with children and young people, and an understanding of the educational system in England is highly desirable.

The training programme for this post is 12 months in duration and will consist of academic and supervised practice learning across mental health services and educational settings, such as primary and secondary schools, and further education colleges.

Delivery of the programme will be provided through a combination of taught days within UCL in collaboration with The Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, experience gained in placement with BICS, and independent self-guided study days.

During training, the post-holder will work under supervision to gain experience across educational settings to enable them to gain the level of competence required to deliver high-quality, evidence-based early interventions for children and young people experiencing mild to moderate mental health problems.

The training course is divided into 6 modules, developing skills and knowledge in areas such as:

• Working with children, young people and their parents/carers to support self-management including development of plans for specific interventions and agreeing outcomes;

• Learning to manage own caseload, gaining the necessary skills to practice a range of interventions such as guided self-help;

• Preparing and presenting caseload information to supervisors;

• Working with colleagues to provide better access to specialist mental health services and supporting referrals where required;

• Supporting colleagues in education to identify and manage issues related to mental health and wellbeing.
  

On successful completion of training, trainee EMHPs will be equipped with the necessary skills, knowledge and capabilities to work as a qualified EMHP as autonomous and responsible practitioners within their scope of practice, alongside education colleagues.

Barnet is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people, and vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. Barnet operates stringent safer recruitment procedures.