Senior Mental Health Practitioner

The closing date is 06 October 2025

Overview

The Crisis Resolution and Home Treatment Team for older adults is a well-established, friendly and supportive multi-disciplinary team based in Fulbourn, Cambridge. The team offers intensive support and treatment at home, and in care homes, for older adults with mental health challenges, including the behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia. The service we offer includes crisis intervention, intensive treatment, support, risk assessment and management to prevent unnecessary hospital admissions and facilitate earlier discharge from mental health hospital. Dementia Intensive Support provides a practical and psycho-educational approach to care within patients/' homes and care homes.

We are strong, passionate, and a fun-loving team with a wealth of clinical experience and knowledge and are looking for a person to join us who will have the following attributes:

- A similar passion for working with older people.

- A desire to develop and enhance existing skills and knowledge.

- Drive and motivation whilst working under pressure in a very busy team.

- Experience in carrying out clinical assessment including robust risk assessments.

- A strong team-player with a great sense of humour

- Motivated by a desire to make a difference. Able to contribute to team meetings and offer a lead role within the teams

Main duties of the job

- The post holder will work within the Crisis Resolution and Home Treatment Team for older people to provide a mental health service seven days a week, within a community setting, by providing a psychosocial assessment to those who present with a range of mental health problems.

- To work in partnership with service users and carers to provide treatment within the least restrictive environment.

- To take on the role of care coordinator for clients and provide leadership support to others, to ensure that full assessment of individual care needs are undertaken, that care is planned, implemented and reviewed on a regular basis.

- To provide assessment to those at risk of being admitted to hospital and provide care, support and treatment within a community setting or facilitate admission to hospital and promote rapid discharge.

- To provide clinical risk and mental health assessment, formulation and short-term contingency planning for people presenting in mental health crisis.

- To act as a role model and promote effective teamwork across the service to meet individual client needs.

- To provide a crisis and home treatment service to patients, which incorporates dementia intensive support.

About us

Cambridgeshire & Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust is a health & social care organisation dedicated to providing high quality care with compassion to improve the health & wellbeing of the people we care for, as well as supporting & empowering them to lead a fulfilling life.

Our clinical teams deliver many NHS services not only via inpatient and primary care setting but also with the community. These services include Children, Adult & Older Peoples mental & physical health, Forensic & Specialist mental health, Learning Disabilities, Primary Care & Liaison psychiatry, Substance misuse, Social care, Research & Development.

To achieve our goal, we look to recruit high calibre candidates that share our vision & values. As an equal opportunities employer, we encourage applications from all sectors of the community, particularly from under-represented groups including disabled people & members of our ethnic minorities & LGBTQ+ communities.

Please be advised we reserve the right to close adverts earlier than the closing date should we receive sufficient applications.

Regrettably, we cannot offer sponsorship for all our job roles. If you apply for a role that we cannot offer sponsorship for, unfortunately, your application form will be rejected from the process.

For further information on CPFT, please visit our website at www.cpft.nhs.uk

Job responsibilities

Please note for this role you will be required to travel independently around the county meeting strict time deadlines. You will need to hold a full UK driving licence and have use of a vehicle. You cannot use public transport for this role as this is not a reliable form of transport and will not allow you to meet service needs. Please confirm in your application that you meet the specified criteria.

Please see Job Description and Person Specification for further information and detail.

- Screen referrals to the service and prioritise referrals effectively and safely

- Provide holistic psychosocial assessment, and subsequent planning and implementation of individual packages of care and treatment.

- Undertake clinical risk assessments, based on latest empirical evidence and compliant with local policies and procedures.

- Undertake risk management; practising safely and accordingly to individual service user needs.

- Provide evidence based clinical interventions, making autonomous clinical decisions about own professional practice.

- Responsibility for the development, planning and implementation of brief care and treatment interventions for individual patients.

- Ensure that individual episodes of care are delivered in a timely, effective, and integrated manner.

- Promote a recovery model that empowers patients, carers, and relatives to be at the forefront of decision making and ownership of their packages of care and treatment.

*DVLA have a number of reciprocal arrangements with overseas countries, for further information please visit the DVLA website

Person Specification

Education / Qualifications

- Mental Health Nurse, Social Work or Occupational Therapy Qualification

- Approved Mental Health Practitioner Teaching (clinical practice) qualification/certificate or equivalent experience

Experience

- Mental health care/treatment relevant to service.

- Working with people presenting with complex mental health needs.

- Experience of working as part of a team.

- Experience of developing service user and carer involvement

- Experience relating to specialism

- Teaching, training and/or supervision of clinical staff

Skills & Abilities

- Assessing, formulating, and working with people presenting in heightened state of distress

- Clinical risk assessment and contingency planning

- Communicating (oral and written) complex/highly technical and clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS

- Brief psychological interventions/strategies for managing crisis

- Evidence of ability to develop and lead new initiatives within the clinical care environment

- Sound knowledge of Mental Health Act, Care Act, Mental Capacity Act, Deprivation of Liberty, Safeguarding Act, Children's Act, Equality Act 2010, Health and Safety Act and the Data protection Act

- Models of care and treatment relevant to working with older people

- Evidenced based clinical interventions relevant to the service

- SystmOne

- Relevant specialist clinical courses/training

Physical Requirements

- Ability to travel promptly across a large geographical area.

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.

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust

£38,682 to £46,580 per annum pro rata

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