Mental Health Wellbeing Practitioner Trainee

We are delighted to be able to offer fully funded training places for our Mental Health and Wellbeing Practitioners to join the Psychological Therapies for Severe Mental Health Problems (PT-SMHP) service in Mid Essex. The roles are based in Braintree and the training starts in September/October 2023.

This training is suitable for those with degrees in Psychology, Teaching, Health or similar or for those who have significant experience of working in health or social care-based settings and who are able to demonstrate at interview the ability to work academically at NVQ level 6 or above.

To apply you must have an interest in working in the field of mental health, and a desire to promote recovery for all.

On successful completion you will be offered a permanent band 5 role within our PT-SMHP service.

The fully paid training role lasts for one year and will result in a PGCert. It offers the opportunity to learn essential skills around supporting recovery for individuals experiencing mental health problems.

Learning takes place through a mixture of remote learning (via our University Partner, Edge Hills University), onsite training, and work-based training, with supervision from skilled professionals in the field of community mental health and psychological therapies.

A lot of your time will be spent seeing adult patients who have been referred by GPs and other local services and deciding on the best psychological support for them.

This will include providing the following psychological interventions:

• Behavioural activation and graded exposure using the ‘GOALS’ programme
• Problem-solving
• Improving sleep
• Recognising and managing emotions
• Guided self-help for bulimia and binge-eating
• Confidence building
• Support with managing medicines management

You’ll work as part of a wider multi-disciplinary team in the Mid Essex area to promote good mental health and recovery from severe mental health problems.

Once qualified, you’ll spend at least 20 hours a week seeing service users, either in a clinic, in their own homes, or via video link or telephone. You will also develop relationships across the adult mental health care system, building up a valuable and detailed understanding of related services so that you can co-ordinate care.

Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (HPFT) is an outstanding organisation with ambitions to match. We are one of just five mental health trusts to achieve an overall rating of ‘Outstanding’ from the Care Quality Commission, and our aim is to be the leading provider of mental health and specialist learning disability services in the country.

Our family of over 3500 members of staff provide health and social care for over 400,000 people with mental ill health, physical ill health and learning disabilities across Hertfordshire, Essex, Buckinghamshire, and Norfolk, delivering these services within the community and several inpatient settings. We also deliver a range of nationally commissioned specialist services including Tier 4 services for children and young people, perinatal services, plus medium and low secure learning disabilities services.

The care we provide makes a fantastic difference to the lives of our service users, their families, and carers - everything is underpinned by choice, independence and equality, with our Trust values embedded throughout:

Our Trust values are:
Welcoming. Kind. Positive. Respectful. Professional.

These values are at the core of who we are, everything we do, and how we do it!

Would you like to be part of the HPFT family? Would you like work with us to ensure our service users live the fullest lives possible they can? Would you like to be supported in your career to be the best that you can be?

Then please read on…

To attend online training with our partner organisation: Edge Hill University and to successfully complete the portfolio of learning.

Attend on-placement training days where there is a chance to practice skills within a local workplace setting.

To learn alongside trained professional in a one-year placement in our Psychological Therapies for Severe Mental Health Problems (PT-SMHP) service in Mid Essex.

To get an experience of being 'part of the team', working alongside Psychological Therapists to learn and practice essential skills. These will include learning how to undertake person-centered assessment and care planning and delivery. You will be trained in psychologically informed interventions under supervision from a trained psychological therapist

This will involve work in community settings. (Car driver is an essential requirement)

To attend supervision to support learning and development.

To be prepared to meet the expectations of the qualified role on qualification.