Senior Mental Health Practitioner

Note: Please apply directly through the West Sussex County Council website. Link below in "Supporting Links"

Contract Type: Permanent

Working Pattern: Part-Time 22.2 hours per week

Location: County Hall, Horsham. Please note that the role will involve Countywide travel.

Interview date: 22/04/2026

We are currently looking for a forward-thinking Senior Mental Health Practitioner. You will lead psychologically and systemically informed formulation work, helping practitioners understand children's mental health needs, emotional risk, family dynamics and wider contextual factors. By interpreting complex and ambiguous information, you will guide assessments and multiagency planning, offering clear professional advice when situations feel stuck, unsafe or uncertain. You will promote reflective, psychologically informed practice across social care, education, health, youth offending and voluntary sector partners, influencing decision making where distress or risk is high.

This is a highly skilled, senior role working within emotionally intense circumstances where risk, trauma, mental health crises, and multiagency complexity are frequent. Advanced reasoning, emotional resilience, and deep expertise are essential.

Main duties of the job

You will:

Guide and support frontline colleagues undertaking the direct work. Model trauma informed, psychologically grounded approaches to assessment, planning, and collaborative working.

Analyse complex and often ambiguous information and help networks move forward when they feel stuck.

Support understanding of mental health conditions, including experiences of hospital treatment (CAMHs Tier 4), ongoing mental health needs, and eating disorders.

Promote consistency and psychologically informed practice across agencies.

Offer workforce training in suicide prevention, self harm, sleep, anxiety, emotional regulation, and mental health literacy.

Provide work based supervision to Emotional Support Workers and Child and Family Workers within the Horizon Suicide Prevention Team.

About us

Launched in July 2025 as part of the development of the West Sussex Childrens Psychological Hub, the Horizon Service plays a vital role within the wider Restore Service, alongside CATs and the Solutions Service. The Horizon Service is made up of two specialist teams, Horizon Intervention and Horizon Suicide Prevention, working together to promote the emotional and mental wellbeing of children across West Sussex.

Our teams support children, families, and professionals by providing expert consultation and advice, delivering high quality training, and offering direct therapeutic intervention. The Horizon Service is grounded in a strong value base. We believe that with the right support, children can recover, thrive, and achieve positive outcomes. We strive to restore hope and empower those we work with through:

• Hope - Believing in recovery and the potential for positive change
• Empowerment - Building on strengths and supporting resilience
• Compassion - Listening, respecting, and centring the child's voice
• Collaboration - Working together across systems for lasting impact
• Inclusion - Embracing neurodiversity and tailoring support to individual needs

Job responsibilities

You will lead psychological and systemic formulation work to support practitioners in understanding mentalhealth needs, emotional risk, family dynamics, and wider contextual influences.

You will provide expert interpretation of complex, often ambiguous information to guide planning and bring clarity where uncertainty exists.

You will support social work teams in shaping assessments that integrate mentalhealth needs, patterns of distress, family functioning, and recoveryoriented principles.

You will offer expert professional advice when situations feel stuck, unsafe, conflicting, or unclear, helping practitioners identify safe, purposeful next steps.

You will support collaborative planning with social care, education, health, youth offending, and voluntarysector partners.

You will influence multiagency decisionmaking in circumstances where emotional distress, risk indicators, or system complexity are high.

You will promote psychologically informed practice across multiagency teams, encouraging shared understanding, reflective thinking, and joinedup planning.

You will provide workbased supervision to Emotional Support Workers and Child and Family Workers within the Horizon Suicide Prevention Team, supporting their confidence, skills, and reflective capacity.

You will rolemodel reflective practice, evidenceinformed thinking, curiosity, and emotionally intelligent leadership.

You will contribute to servicewide development, practiceimprovement activity, thematic learning, and the strengthening of suicideprevention practice across the service.

You will deliver workforce training on suicide prevention, emotionalsafety planning, selfharm, sleep, anxiety, emotional regulation, and traumainformed approaches.

You will support practitioners in identifying, analysing, and escalating safeguarding concerns, ensuring thoughtful, lawful, and timely responses.

You will maintain high standards of recordkeeping, professional boundaries, confidentiality, and ethical conduct.

You will actively promote organisational values and contribute to a culture of reflective, compassionate, and evidenceinformed practice.

You will be an experienced, reflective practitioner with:

Sophisticated analytical skills and the ability to develop rich, multilayered formulations.

Expertise in mentalhealth presentations in young people, including mood disorders, traumarelated difficulties, selfharm, suicidality, and eating disorders.

An understanding of young people who have experienced inpatient mentalhealth treatment, including associated discharge planning needs.

The ability to lead psychologically informed conversations that guide social-care, education, and health professionals.

The ability to recognise and articulate complexity, including contradictory information, fluctuating risk indicators, and multiagency dilemmas.

Emotional resilience and the ability to maintain clarity of thought in highpressure situations.

Strong leadership behaviours consistent with an advanced practitioner, including rolemodelling, coaching, and influencing.

A commitment to antiracist, antioppressive, and traumainformed practice.

Person Specification

Key Skills

• 1. Ability to analyse complex mental-health presentations and develop formulations that integrate emotional, relational, developmental, and systemic factors.
• 2. Ability to guide others through difficult or emotionally charged circumstances with calm professionalism.
• 3. Good communication, organisational and interpersonal skills. Capacity to navigate and explain complex information, including mental-health legislation where relevant.
• 4. Skills in engaging children, young people, their families and external agencies to build strong, trusting relationships and work collaboratively to achieve positive change.
• 5. A willingness to work in a creative and empathetic way to reduce the risk of suicide and promote positive mental health outcomes.
• 6. Ability to prioritise and manage own workload, co-ordinating a range of tasks in a clear and logical way to meet agreed deadlines, whilst working work autonomously towards clear goals.
• 7. Ability to reflect on own practice and learn from experience, taking responsibility for own performance and be proactive in relation to own work and professional development.
• 8. Sound and accurate IT skills, including report writing, maintaining accurate records, ensuring confidentiality, and protecting information.

Qualifications

• Degree in Social Work, or relevant degree in health, youth work, education for the Children and Young Peoples Workforce (or equivalent), or demonstrable equivalent comparable experience, and appropriately registered with Social Work England (if postholder has a degree in Social Work) or other professional registration as appropriate (NMC, HCPC, or other).

Experience

• Significant experience working with young people presenting with mentalhealth needs, including suicidal distress, eating disorders, trauma, self-harm, and emotional dysregulation.
• Experience supporting young people who have received treatment in hospital settings, including understanding discharge planning, relapse risk, and recovery needs.
• Experience developing staff capability through consultation, coaching, supervision, or training.
• Experience of collaborative working with a range of professionals, demonstrating an awareness of differing roles and responsibilities and effective methods of collaboration, e.g. health, housing, learning, statutory, voluntary and independent sector.
• Requirement to communicate in English with members of the public.
• Valid and full driving licence.
• Knowledge of the Mental Health Act and aftercare responsibilities, specifically s.117, and how these influence planning, multiagency responsibilities, and ongoing support within Childrens Services.
• Advanced postqualifying training in psychological or systemic practice.
• Understand the impact of childhood trauma and adverse childhood experiences

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.

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