Job overview

The Mental Health Support Team (MHST) Secretary will provide high quality administrative and secretarial support to the Mental Health Support Teams (MHST) across East Lancashire and Blackburn with Darwen. The postholder will play a key role in ensuring the smooth running of MHST operations, supporting the delivery of mental health services in educational settings, and maintaining effective communication across teams, schools and partner organisations. This includes supporting practitioners, managers, consultants and partner agencies.

The role requires strong organisational, communication and IT skills, with the ability to manage competing priorities and work independently as well as part of a team. Act as a first point of contact for enquiries from schools, parents/carers and partner agencies, ensuring queries are dealt with professionally and efficiently. A professional and compassionate approach is essential when handling sensitive information and communicating with children, young people, families and partner organisations.

Main duties of the job

•    Provide a full secretarial and administrative service to MHST practitioners, consultants and managers, including accurate word processing, correspondence, reports and meeting papers.
•    Support the organisation of multi-disciplinary meetings, including preparation of agendas, note-taking, accurate minute writing and timely distribution of actions.
•    Manage incoming and outgoing correspondence (email, post and telephone), prioritising urgent matters appropriately.
•    Process referrals in line with agreed protocols and liaise with education settings, GP practices and other partner agencies where required.
•    Receive and respond to telephone and email enquiries from young people, parents/carers, schools and healthcare professionals in a professional and empathetic manner.
•    Provide cross cover and work flexibly with other administrators across Children & Young People’s Mental Health – East (CYPMH East).
•    Ability to undertake tasks independently/manage own workload with support from team and MHST Assistant Business Manager.

Working for our organisation

LSCFT values diversity and inclusion, recognising that talent from varied backgrounds creates a flexible, creative, and effective workforce. We actively challenge discrimination and welcome applications from all, regardless of age, disability (including those with experience of accessing or caring for someone who has accessed mental health or learning disability services), ethnicity, gender, religion, belief, or sexual orientation.

Our aim is to reflect the communities we serve, so we particularly encourage applications from under-represented groups. If you’d like to discuss your application, please ask.

We also welcome individuals with lived experience relevant to the role or service area, as your insight brings authenticity to our services.

LSCFT support flexible working, we believe that a positive work/life balance benefits NHS employees through improved health and wellbeing. We would consider working patterns such as term time, part time, compressed hours and flexi-time.