Job overview

An exciting opportunity has arisen in the Gloucestershire Mental Health Support Team for the recruitment of Qualified Education Mental Health Practitioner’s (EMHP) or Children’s Wellbeing Practitioners. In line with the government’s priority to increase access and availability of mental health and wellbeing support for children and young people, the EMHP role is an exciting opportunity to deliver evidence-based early interventions for children and young people, working across both educational settings and healthcare sectors.

Successful candidates will be employed on a full-time basis based within Gloucestershire, and will play a key role as members of the Mental Health Support Team, who will have the responsibility for delivering schools’ overarching approach to providing mental health and wellbeing support for children and young people.

Potential candidates will have already successfully completed the HEE commissioned 1yr ‘Education Mental Health Practitioner’ course or the equivalent ‘Children’s Wellbeing Practitioner’ course.

As part of this role there may be a requirement to travel across the localities.

Please be advised that this vacancy may close ahead of schedule due to a high volume of applicants.

Main duties of the job

To allow the post holder, with appropriate supervision, to work as an autonomous and responsible practitioner as their training affords and within the scope of their job description, to engage in;
• Delivering evidence-based intervention for children and young people in education setting with mild to moderate mental health problems
• Helping children and young people within these settings who present with more severe problems to rapidly access more specialist services
• Supporting and facilitating staff in education settings to identify and where appropriate manage issues related to mental health and wellbeing
• Working with and within education environments to afford better access to specialist mental health services and to use the acquired skills, knowledge and abilities to deliver a service based within education settings that builds on and reinforces but does not replace those initiatives that already exist within these environments.

The qualification, training & experience requirements for the role are underlined in the Job Description/Person Specification.

Working for our organisation

We have a skilled and dedicated workforce of over 5000 colleagues working in a diverse range of services over 55 sites and within people’s homes. We strive to enable a welcoming workplace culture that builds and celebrates civility, inclusivity and diversity, while providing a sense of belonging and trust.

Annual staff surveys, regular Pulse surveys and other engagement opportunities provide our people with lots of opportunity to tell us about their experiences of working with us.  In the latest staff survey, 61% of colleagues gave us their views.  It was great to hear that:

• 72% of colleagues would recommend the Trust as a place to work, ranking us 1st for Provider Trusts in the South West region on this question.
• 76% would recommend the standard of care provided in our services if a friend or relative needed treatment, also ranking us 1st in the South West region.
• 81% said that care of patients and service users is the Trust’s priority, compared with an average in comparable NHS Trusts in England of 64%

This high-level overview shows we are in a healthy position, with higher scores than average for comparable organisations, alongside a great response rate, indicating good staff engagement.  However, we also know we have plenty of room for improvement in many areas. To that end, we continue to prioritise and invest in our commitment to genuinely becoming a Great Place to Work with consistent top-quartile performance in the annual staff survey and Pulse surveys.