Mental Health Support Team (MHST) East Suffolk - Senior Clinician

Ipswich, East of England, United Kingdom Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust provides child and adult mental health services, learning disability, wellbeing, older people's and eating disorder services across Norfolk and Suffolk.

We are committed to equality, diversity and inclusion and want to reflect the diversity of our local communities within our teams. We welcome applications from all talented individuals with the relevant qualifications, skills, knowledge and experience.

Please note due to the nature of our roles and patient demographic, you will be required to undertake physical intervention training and remain trained, as required by your role.

Job overview

Ambitious, creative, clinically skilled? Passionate about mental health services for children and young people?

This is an exciting opportunity to join Suffolk's innovative Mental Health Support Team (MHST) as a Senior Clinician. MHSTs play a key role in delivering early intervention within education settings, ensuring children and young people access appropriate mental health support more quickly.

You will provide clinical expertise and operational support, working closely with the East Area Leadership Team, to deliver a high-quality service.

The team is currently transitioning to a new Neighbourhood Team model and preparing for further expansion from January 2027. Initially, you will support this transition before helping to implement and develop the new model.

Based in the East Area, covering East Suffolk (excluding Lowestoft and Waveney), you will be part of a leadership team supporting five Neighbourhood Teams.

Applications are welcomed from a range of professional backgrounds, including nursing, social work, occupational therapy and psychology.

Interviews are anticipated to take place on the 23rd September.

Main duties of the job

You will be responsible for providing a high-quality early intervention service to children, young people (and their families) experiencing mild to moderate mental health difficulties. You will build relationships with and work across a range of education settings.

The role combines direct clinical assessment, formulation and intervention with day-to-day clinical leadership, oversight, outcome monitoring, audit and service improvement.

You will use your clinical skills and experience for direct delivery of evidence-based interventions, consultation to education settings and delivery of whole/school college approaches. You will utilise skills and knowledge of CBT and child and adolescent mental health practice and support service delivery through collaboration and coproduction.

You will clinically supervise and line manage Senior Education Mental Health Practitioners (EMHPs) and line manage EMHPs. You will work with the MHST East Area Leadership team to share responsibilities to support the team. Travel across the East Suffolk Area will be required.

Working for our organisation

At Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, inclusion is at the heart of how we work. We are committed to creating a fair, transparent and accessible recruitment process where every candidate has the opportunity to succeed.

We actively encourage applications from people from all backgrounds, particularly those currently underrepresented in our workforce, including those from the global majority. We recognise that not everyone has equal access to opportunities and are working to address this.

We are committed to providing reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment process and ensuring all candidates receive a positive and equitable experience.

Here at NSFT we pride ourselves on being a welcoming, talented, friendly and supportive team who like nothing better than sharing experiences and learning from each other. In addition to ongoing training and development opportunities, we are committed to providing an environment in which you can thrive.

Why work for us? We have challenges as a Trust, but we have ambitious aspirations, are pushing ahead with exciting transformation work and we need dedicated individuals to support us on our journey. We have strong, established professional networks coupled with an exceptional leadership team who will ensure you are truly cared for and cared about.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

A job in the Suffolk MHSTs will inevitably be challenging and demanding at times, but it will also be immensely rewarding and provide you with great opportunities to make a genuine difference to the lives of others. You will join a service that has developed a caring, creative and hard-working environment; your ideas about how this service continues to develop and grow will be highly valued.

This is an exciting time of MHST expansion as we move to covering 100% of education settings, including independent and specialist schools. In Suffolk, NSFT are developing and transforming our other early intervention mental health services and working closely with our partners in the Local Authority and the Voluntary Sector. Changes across services are driven by the needs of local communities, with the aim of embedding mental health services within the community and truly bringing the expertise to where it is needed.

We would welcome any informal conversations about these roles. Please do contact us for more information.

For further details regarding the role, please see the attached job description and person.

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria

• Mental Health Nurse, Occupational Therapist, Social Worker or Degree Level Qualification or studied at equivalent level
• Fully registered with the appropriate professional or regulatory body (e.g. HCPC, NMC) or equivalent.

Desirable criteria

• Higher degree or post-graduate certificate in area of clinical / therapeutic practice

Experience

Essential criteria

• Able to demonstrate experience at a senior clinical level including staff management and clinical supervision experience.
• Experience with mental health risk assessment/formulation and ongoing management of mental health needs

Desirable criteria

• Ability to deliver other therapeutic approaches e.g. DBT, EMDR, IPT, systemic therapy

Skills

Essential criteria

• Competent assessment, formulation and intervention skills, relevant to profession

Knowledge

Essential criteria

• Build on / develop further specialist knowledge of health promotion and recovery

Please be aware that, due to the high number of applications for certain roles, this vacancy may close earlier than the advertised closing date. We encourage you to submit your application as soon as possible.

YOUR APPLICATION

We can provide all our job application materials in alternative formats so that these are accessible to everyone. Should you require any documents within this job pack in an alternative format, please do not hesitate to contact us at [email removed].

PLEASE NOTE: If you use a hotmail, msn or yahoo e-mail account, you will need to check your "junk" mail regularly as these email providers will divert any communication from this Trust/NHS JOBS straight into your " junk" inbox.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES Apart from its legal duties in relation to equalit