Job overview

Mental Health Support Team (MHST) Band 6 Mental Health Practitioner

We are an expanding service and already have established MHST teams. We are recruiting to 2 more teams.

We are looking for Mental Health Practitioners. We would expect previous, significant experience at Band 5 or equivalent working within emotional/mental health and experience of working with children and young people and their families or relevant transferable skills.

We would require a core professional qualification relevant to mental health and children and young people e.g. nursing with specialism in mental health or learning disability nursing, children’s nursing, Occupational Therapy, Social Work or CWP/EMHP/PWP with accreditation with BABCP or BACP

Do you have a passion for Early Intervention?

Are you interested in working with children and young people at an early intervention stage to support their emotional/mental health and wellbeing?

Do you enjoy working within a team, sharing your knowledge of how to support children and young people with colleagues inside and outside of the NHS? Are you keen to develop your clinical skills and offer evidence-based interventions? Are you able to support and supervise junior colleagues? We have more senior roles within MHST, therefore can offer career progression too.

If the answer is yes, we welcome your application.

The propose start date for the university course is 29th September 2025 - Subject to Change 

Interviews to take place w/c 1st September 2025

Main duties of the job

This role is to work as a senior member in an exciting service which has been set up during 2021 and is expanding across Northamptonshire; the Mental Health Support Team (MHST). MHST’s are working within schools, ensuring children and young people receive faster access to earlier mental health support. You will be one of the senior clinical members of the team adding to the number of teams in a growing early intervention mental health service.  You will be expected to hold a clinical caseload, offer supervision to junior staff, be involved with the Whole School Approach and when necessary and appropriate deputise for the Band 7 Clinical Lead within your team.

In this role you will support and provide a high-quality service to children and young people (and their families) experiencing mild to moderate mental health difficulties. This will be done through the supervision of junior staff, providing consultations within schools and through direct delivery of evidence-based interventions to support the recovery of children and young people referred to the service. This work will be in accordance with clinical governance processes and professional standards.

There may be an opportunity to access the Low Intensity Supervisors Training Course (LIST) at Northampton University.

Working for our organisation

NHFT is an integrated primary care and mental health Trust, providing physical, mental health and specialty services in both hospital settings and out in the community. Because we put the person at the centre of all we do, we focus on delivering care that is as easy to access as possible. This means many of our services can be provided at home, work or in schools. We also provide health services to various prisons and detention centres in Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire.

NHFT promotes a culture of learning to improve the care and safety of our patients and staff, which focuses on people who enable our Trust to be ‘outstanding’ by supporting opportunity, innovation, development and growth.