About the role

Senior Practitioner

Service: Hackney Children & Young People’s Mental Health Hub

Salary:
- starting at £36,501 FTE per annum, rising to £40,024 (inclusive of Inner London Weighting FTE per annum)

Location: Hybrid- at least two days of delivering the service in person in Hackney

Hours: 37 hours per week (full time)

We offer flexible working arrangements - please see below for more details.

Contract: Fixed term until 31st March 2027

We are seeking an experienced and dynamic Senior Practitioner to play a pivotal role within our innovative Children and Young People's Mental Health Hubs service. The successful candidate will lead on referral management, assessment, triage and case allocation across our integrated youth work and counselling model, ensuring young people receive the right support at the right time from the most appropriate practitioner. Alongside this strategic function, the Senior Practitioner will maintain a small caseload of young people requiring direct support, provide practice leadership across the team, contribute to quality assurance activities, and support service development activities aimed at sustaining and expanding the model.

This is an exciting opportunity for someone who combines excellent frontline youth work practice with strong assessment, safeguarding, leadership and quality improvement skills, and who is passionate about improving outcomes for children and young people experiencing emotional and mental health challenges.

Please check the job description for details about the main requirements of the role

Main Responsibilities:
Assessment, Triage and Allocation
• Lead the assessment and triage process for all referrals into the Mental Health Hubs.
• Undertake holistic assessments of children and young people's emotional wellbeing, mental health, safeguarding, practical support needs, strengths and aspirations.
• Identify levels of risk and determine appropriate intervention pathways.
• Allocate cases across the multidisciplinary team, including Youth Workers, Therapeutic Youth Workers and Counsellors.
• Monitor waiting lists, service demand and capacity to ensure timely access to support.
• Chair allocation and case review meetings.
• Support step-up and step-down arrangements between youth work, counselling and external services.

Direct Practice
• Hold a small caseload of children and young people requiring targeted support.
• Undertake holistic emotional health and wellbeing assessments to identify strength, needs, risks and aspirations
• Develop personalised wellbeing plans and outcome focused goals relating to mental health, education, training, employment, housing, financial wellbeing and wider life opportunities.
• Deliver high-quality one-to-one and group interventions focused on emotional wellbeing, resilience and mental health
• Deliver targeted Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG) providing practical support, advocacy and signposting to appropriate services and opportunities
Practice Leadership and Workforce Development
• Provide professional advice, guidance and consultation to practitioners across the service.
• Support colleagues in the management of complex cases, safeguarding concerns and risk.
• Deliver training and practice development activities to staff and volunteers.
• Support staff induction and ongoing professional development.
• Promote trauma-informed, strengths-based and young person-centred practice.
• Contribute to a culture of reflective practice, learning and continuous improvement.
• Subject to future funding and service requirements, the postholder may assume formal supervision and line management responsibilities.

Quality Assurance and Service Improvement
• Lead and undertake regular audits of case files, assessments, risk management and outcomes recording.
• Support implementation of the service quality assurance framework. Identify themes, trends and learning from audits to drive continuous improvement.
• Contribute to service reviews, evaluations and impact reporting
• Ensure high standards of record keeping, safeguarding compliance and data quality

Service Development and Sustainability
• Work with service managers to demonstrate the impact of the integrated youth work and counselling model.
• Support the collection, analysis and presentation of outcomes and performance data.
• Contribute to reports, presentations and evidence submissions for commissioners, funders and stakeholders.
• Help identify opportunities for service growth, innovation and future funding.
• Promote co-production and ensure young people’s voices and lived experiences inform service development and continuous improvement.
• Represent the service at partnership meetings and external events where appropriate.

Partnership and Multi-Agency Working
• Develop positive partnerships with schools, CAMHS, social care, health services and community organisations.
• Attend and contribute to multi-agency meetings.
• Advocate on behalf of young people and support effective pathways into and between services.

Benefits:
- an annual paid leave entitlement that commences at 25 working days, and after a full year of service, rising each April by one day, subject to a maximum of 30 working days plus bank holiday
- up to 6% matched-pension contributions
- enhanced paid sick leave and paid family leave provisions
- eye care and winter flu jabs vouchers
- cycle to work scheme
- investing in your professional development with ongoing quality training and career development opportunities

We are forward looking, ambitious and committed to continuous improvement. We are a people focused, can-do organisation, which strives for excellence in all we do and operates with mutual respect.
To Apply:
• Click the ‘Apply’ link below and fill out our EOI form
• Closing Date: 9am, Monday the 28th of September - Interviews are scheduled to take place on Thursday 1st of Oct
For any queries, or if you would like to discuss any aspect of the selection process or the potential for flexible working, please email: whitney.papa@family-action.org.uk

All appointments with Family Action are subject to satisfactory Safer Recruitment checks.
Our commitment to Equality, Diversity & Inclusion:
We are happy to consider any reasonable adjustments that candidates may need during the recruitment process and you will be asked whether you require any adjustments if shortlisted for interview. We also make reasonable adjustments on the job, where required. We are committed to Equality, Diversity & Inclusion in all that we do and welcome applications from all sections of the community. Intersectionality is important to us and we welcome applications from ethnically diverse communities, LGBTQIA+ candidates and disabled candidates. We are committed to increasing the representation of these groups at Family Action because we know that greater diversity will lead to even greater results for families and children and we strive for our workforce to be truly representative of the diverse communities we support.

All candidates with a disability are welcome to apply under the Disability Confident Scheme and request priority consideration for an interview, provided they meet the essential criteria for the role.

To help remove financial barriers to working with us, we will reimburse reasonable travel costs if you are invited to attend an interview in person.

*Ordinarily Family Action appoints new starters at the starting point of the salary scale (with subsequent annual pay progression), unless you have experience that would justify appointment further up the salary scale or there are any other exceptional reasons.