Senior Mental Health Practitioner- Lead Clinician

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Senior Mental Health Practitioner - Lead Clinician The closing date is 10 December 2025

Are you looking for an exciting new development opportunity in a fast-paced environment? This could be the role for you. Are you currently a Band 7 practitioner looking for a new challenge, or a Band 6 practitioner looking for the next step in your career?

We are looking for an Experienced Clinician to take a lead working in our Assertive Outreach Team (AOT). This role is part of the Kirklees and Calderdale CAMHS crisis team, focusing on working with young people who have severe and enduring mental health difficulties and are finding it difficult to engage with and access mainstream service.

You will be required to have a significant amount of autonomy as you will be leading on some of the service development of the team, with support from the team manager.

Ideally, you will have extensive experience working within the field of children's mental health in a health care setting, especially managing risk in health settings. As this role is acting as a lead practitioner within the team, experience of service development and implementing service change is needed.

As part of this role, you will attend multiagency meetings where you will represent the service and discuss complex cases as well as liaison with other teams/services both internally and with external partners.

You must have a professional registration to be able to apply for this post.

All employees of the Trust are strongly encouraged to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to protect patients.

Main duties of the job You will work autonomously within the context of a multi-disciplinary team approach and undertake specific clinical work with patients and their families who can often present with a range of complex mental health needs.

You will support our partners within wider services and provide clinical supervision to staff. The need to work flexibly to support the needs of the service is essential. In this role you will also provide training to colleagues across the district.

You will work alongside colleagues to support young people who are experiencing mental ill health and will draw upon your extensive clinical knowledge and relevant experience of assessing and managing risk within a mental health and community setting.

You will undertake assessments young people's mental health needs and work collaboratively to develop plans with families and carers to ensure safe discharge from hospital.

You will need good working relationships with key professionals, families and young people therefore, excellent communication and engagement skills are essential. Experience and a commitment to improving service delivery and developing new ways of supporting the wider team is essential.

At the time of advertising, this role does meet the minimum requirements set by UK Visas and Immigration to sponsor candidates to work in the UK. We look forward to receiving your application.

About us We are a specialist NHS Foundation Trust that provides community, mental health and learning disability services for the people of Barnsley, Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield. We also provide low and medium secure services and are the lead for the west Yorkshire secure provider collaborative.

Our mission is to help people reach their potential and live well in their communities, we do this by providing high-quality care in the right place at the right time. We employ staff in both clinical and non-clinical services who work hard to make a difference to the lives of service users, families and carers.

We encourage and welcome applications from all protected characteristic groups, we value diversity and want our workforce to be reflective of our communities.

Being a foundation Trust means we're accountable to our members, who can have a say in how we run. Around 14,300 local people (including staff) are members of our Trust.

Join us and you will be one of over 4,500 staff committed to supporting and improving the mental, physical and social needs of the thousands of people we meet and help each year.

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults and expects all colleagues and volunteers to share this commitment.

We do reserve the right to close vacancy before the advertised closing date if necessary, so please apply as soon as possible.

Job responsibilities JOB SUMMARY

This job description is an outline of the main duties of the post. The post-holder will be required to undertake other duties commensurate with the grade as directed.

The content of this post will be reviewed in consultation with the post-holder when necessary and in line with the service developments.

To provide highly specialist skills and expertise, facilitating interventions of the highest quality in the field of mental health, including emergency assessments and intensive interventions with children, young people and their families.

To work autonomously and collaboratively within the MDT, providing consultation and teaching for other agencies/professionals.

To provide supervision and teaching to all other disciplines within CAMHS and to deputise as agreed for the team leader.

To promote safeguarding and the welfare of children and young people.

KEY RESULT AREAS CLINICAL To work autonomously within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility in accordance with the Trust Policies and procedures.

The post-holder will have highly developed skills in assessing the needs of children and their carers based on the analysis of highly complex facts and situations. Interventions will be planned based on the assessment information and interpretation of this. The clinical assessment will include gathering appropriate historical information from the child and family, allied to clinical observation of family relationships and mental state of the child and other family members, and obtaining relevant information from other agencies. Offering highly specialist expertise in child and adolescent mental health, ensuring clear documentation in all appropriate case notes and sharing assessments and information with the family and all relevant professionals.

To undertake highly specialist initial assessments of young people following acts of serious self-harm and attempted suicide in line with evidence based practice.

To undertake highly specialised risk assessments following referral for presentations requiring urgent mental health or psychiatric assessment and plan relevant interventions.

To implement intensive interventions with young people and their families, as relevant to the post-holders main clinical role, i.e. group and individual work, systemic family interventions. This will include analysis, interpretation and evaluation to reformulate plans of care.

The post-holder will provide therapeutic care to emotionally demanding clients in highly emotive situations.

The post-holder will develop and maintain therapeutic relationships with children and carers. This will include cases of high complexity which require more specialised levels of assessment and therapeutic skills.

As part of multi-disciplinary team, the Senior Mental Health Practitioner will deliver and devise complex packages of care. Provide individual and family review/follow-up sessions to children, young people or their carers.

To take a lead role in setting guidelines and standards that will ensure all young persons identified with complex problems are discharged from Specialist CAMHS with an appropriate package of care from universal services.

The post-holder will have skills to communicate highly complex information regarding personal psycho-social problems in an empathic and supportive way using the highest level of interpersonal skills in situations which can be highly emotional and sometimes antagonistic. Service users and families may have difficulty or be reluctant to understand what is communicated to them.

Communicate complex, sensitive or contentious information utilising highly developed interpersonal skills. Take into account issues of confidentiality and the consent of Adults and Young People. Considering and assessing a child's maturity to consent.

To work with children, young people (0 18) and their families, liaising with external agencies, e.g. Education, Social Services and Paediatric Services. Presenting problems are frequently complex and require that sophisticated packages of care are negotiated and delivered. To actively promote user/carer involvement in all aspects of care planning/delivery whilst respecting the rights, capabilities and wishes of the individuals concerned.

To apply a sound knowledge of safeguarding children and guidelines in clinical work.

To deputise for the team leader in his/her absence.

Apply Trust policies and procedures in instances of aggression, acute distress and disturbed mental health presentations.

HUMAN RESOURCES The Senior Mental Health Practitioner will take the responsibility in developing, managing and coordinating the supervision systems for the team.

The post-holder will support other team members in managing cases, providing joint working where appropriate on specific therapeutic techniques.

To manage and coordinate rotas for all disciplines within CAMHS specific to their own area of specialism.

To support the Clinical Governance Lead within the service and participate in the development and maintenance of governance processes, i.e . click apply for full job details