The closing date is 08 April 2026
Salary: £47,810 to £54,710 a year pending pay award
Job summary
This role provides dedicated support to children and young people aged 5-18 who are in care. The postholder will support children and young people presenting with mental health needs that require CAMHS involvement or sensitive, informed signposting to appropriate services. The role also involves working closely with their parents, carers and professional networks. It is designed to enhance the experience and care pathway of children in care who are accessing mental health support.
The core purpose of the role is to ensure that children and young people know who they can approach when they need support, and to help them feel confident that the adults around them will take time to understand their individual mental health needs in a compassionate, non-judgemental and trauma-informed manner. The postholder will work collaboratively across CAMHS and partner agencies to ensure that each young person is connected with the most appropriate support, in the right place, at the right time.
The postholder will also contribute to other functions within CAMHS Getting Advice, such as triage, and will provide clinical supervision to CAMHS Getting Advice clinicians.
Job responsibilities
To assess, develop, implement, and evaluate therapeutic interventions, and to be responsible for the management of your own caseload from referral to discharge.
To carry out specialist and urgent assessments of a young persons mental health needs and associated risks when required, including deliberate selfharm assessments.
To work with children, young people, and their families, promoting opportunities for their maximum engagement and involvement in formulations, care plans, and evaluation of the service they receive.
To work jointly with staff from other agencies in direct work with children, young people, and their families.
When appropriate, to engage in joint work with other specialist CAMHS personnel as agreed with the CAMHS Service Manager.
To develop effective liaison with referrers, and those contributing to referrals to specialist CAMHS, and to guide referrers to appropriate resources for children and young people with mental health needs.
To attend CAMHS meetings and case discussions as appropriate.
To work closely as part of the multidisciplinary CAMHS team.
To practise within current legislation governing the delivery of services to children and young people, including legislation relating to Looked After Children and the safeguarding of children as defined in the Children Act (1989, amended 2004), as well as local guidelines.
To assess safeguarding issues for each case, to practise within local safeguarding guidelines, to share and directly refer concerns when appropriate, and to participate in multiagency safeguarding conferences.
To participate in regular reviews of cases and attend case discussions, conferences, and reviews as appropriate.
To comply with the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) requirements of your professional body.
Please contact Lois Richards (Clinical Service Manager) if you would like any further information.
Please see the attached Job Description for a full list of duties and responsibilities
Person Specification
Qualification
Essential
- Relevant completed professional qualification (e.g. clinical psychology, mental health nursing, social work, family therapy, occupational therapy, accredited CBT, psychotherapy)
- Maintenance of appropriate professional registration (i.e. HCPC, UKCP,NME)
Desirable
- Additional training in assessment and therapeutic approaches in a specialist area relevant to CAMHS
- Evidence of working therapeutically with children and young people
Experience
Essential
- Knowledge of national and local guidelines/policy regarding provision of public sector services to children/young people and their families
- Experience of risk assessment and management appropriate to children and young people. Including young people who are suicidal and present a risk to self and/or others.
- Experience of multi-disciplinary team working
- Knowledge of working together arrangements in particular, Children in Need assessments, Clinical Risk assessment and Child Protection guidelines
Desirable
- Experience in a community CAMHS service
- Experience of managing self injurious behaviour
- Clinical Risk management in relation to children
Skills
Essential
- Ability to work with children, young people and families from a wide range of social, cultural and ethnic backgrounds
- Ability to organise and prioritise client caseload
- Skilled in Clinical Risk assessment and management in relation to children and young people including experience of managing self-injurious behaviour
- Ability to be flexible about where the child and family are seen e.g. clinic, school or home
- Ability to be sensitive to complex emotional issues
- Ability to write concise reports for referrers, families and other agencies
- Ability to communicate sensitive and difficult information to clients and their carers
- Ability to establish and maintain good working relationships with other professionals within the team
Disclosure and Barring Service Check
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.
Certificate of Sponsorship
Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).
From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).
UK Registration
Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).