Children & Young Persons Counsellor
Job description
Job Description
JOB TITLE: Children & Young Persons Counsellor (CYP)
ACCOUNTABLE TO: Joanne Sunderland - Chief Executive Officer
LOCATION: A Clinic within a Primary Care setting in North East Essex (NEE)
Job Summary
Join a team that is passionately committed to empowering children, young people, and families to build resilience through the healing of adverse childhood experiences and trauma. Having the determination and drive to make a sustainable difference in the lives of children, young people and families.
Although employed by GP Primary Choice, you will be providing a clinic within a Primary Care setting for 1 of the Primary Care Networks (PCN) within NEE. You will have clinical supervision from the GPs at the practices within the PCN, and support from a supervisor mentor.
As well as providing additional appointments within primary care specifically for CYP counselling, it will also mean that children and young people who are experiencing poor mental health will be able to access services quickly to be assessed and treated. Safeguarding issues will be identified much earlier and the necessary referrals made. The key aim is to improve well-being and support for children and young people and their parents/carers. This will in turn improve attendance at school and improve mental health in children and young people. This will be captured through patient and parent questionnaires.
Providing this service should help to:
- Reduce emergency attendance and admissions in children and young people for self-injury, suicide attempts, and other mental health-related reasons
- Reduce referrals to SET CAHMS
- Reduce waiting times for SET CAHMS referrals
All CYP counsellors will require an enhanced DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) disclosure.
Qualification:
- Diploma level (or equivalent) qualification in counselling, psychotherapy, or counselling psychology which has been accredited by a recognized professional body (BACP, BOS, UKCP or similar)
- Member of BACP or equivalent
- Hold or be working towards BACP accreditation as a counsellor
- Additional training or experience in working with young people
Key Responsibilities:
- To work independently as required and provide support to empower children and young people to live healthier lives.
- To support service users to identify early signs of mental health relapse and alert appropriate staff involved in the person’s care.
- To work in isolated situations with children and young people who may be vulnerable or at risk.
- To establish supportive and empowering relationships with the children, younger people, their families, and carers.
- To monitor and report any changes, both positive and negative, within the care of the child or the young person, during clinical meetings, supervision and at other relevant times.
- To ensure that children and young people and their families understand whom to contact within the different agencies that may be involved in their care.
- To take appropriate courses of action in an emergency.
- Responsible for own work and highlighting any concerns regarding workload to management and/or GP partners.
- Carrying out and monitoring treatment programmes as directed/necessary.
- Forming part of an interdependent multi-disciplinary team helping to ensure that their input is integrated into the children and young people’s overall care.
- Promoting the recovery of children and young people and supporting them to build their independence in the community around the transition to adulthood.
- To operate from an inclusive value-based approach, which recognises and respects diversity.
- To liaise and build relationships with the third sector and NHS-based organisations, to gain information on the services they are offering and share this knowledge with the MDT, and signpost the children, younger people, families and carers accordingly.
Clinical Skills:
- To deliver outcome-focused assessments under supervision, and evidence-based interventions to children and young people experiencing mild to moderate mental health difficulties.
- To work in partnership and support children and young people experiencing mild to moderate mental health difficulties and their families in self-management of presenting difficulties
- To work in partnership with children, young people and families in the development of plans for the intervention and agreed outcomes.
- Empower children, young people and families, to make informed choices about interventions.
- To ensure the effective escalation of cases via clinical meetings and clinical supervision.
- To provide children, young people, families and carers with information regarding the variety and range of psychological interventions and treatments available including guided self-help and to deliver these interventions both face-to-face or via telephone.
- To attend MDT and other clinical meetings as needed
- To support young people with the process of transition into adult services
- To work collaboratively with children, young people and their families to co-develop effective treatment plans within your scope of competence.
IT/Administration:
- To be computer literate.
- To promote agile working
- To ensure accurate recording of actions, and updating patient’s records, maintaining confidentiality at all times.
- To take active control in the planning and administration relating to day to day running of the caseload.
- To collect activity and outcome data routinely
Communications:
- To develop a broad range of relationships with both internal and external colleagues and partner agencies, including the voluntary sector, services users, parents and carers
- To have a wide range of knowledge in communicating and managing patient care approaches.
- To be able to effectively communicate with colleagues, peers, senior managers and clinical leads within the practice and externally.
- To be able to communicate complex patient-related information facilitating positive outcomes and ensuring collaborative working.
- Participate in the review and development of clinical policies and identifies improvements to service provision.
Demands of the job:
- Able to cope with the occasional unpleasant behaviour including physical and verbal aggression and have strategies in place to deal with this
- Able to undertake clinical sessions with children and young people
- Have observational skills and concurrent intelligence analysis under pressure
- Use good time management skills, and the requirement to change subject focus frequently
- Be flexible as the workload can be unpredictable.
- Deal with highly distressing situations where progress may be very slow and require patience and understanding
- Deal with Children & Young people exhibiting high levels of distress and describing in detail harrowing traumatic life events
- Deal with clients and families distressed by the effects of severe physical and mental health problems
- Deal with psychological problems in children and young people experiencing adverse life experiences, irresolvable life experiences, circumstances and intractable life problems.
- Access appropriate support to ensure that the health, safety and well-being of children and young people are dealt with i.e. safeguarding.
Training:
- To ensure own continued professional development and support a culture of lifelong learning.
- To undertake mandatory training and workshops.
- To undertake a regular appraisal, developing a personal development plan that includes clinical competencies reflecting the health needs of the local population and relates to CMP strategy.
- To support training as part of the role including changes to professional development and implementation of new policies and guidelines as the role develops
The following training modules will need to be completed within 3 months of employment:
Anxiety Awareness
Autism Awareness
Being Open
Bullying and Harassment
Conflict Resolution
Consent
Depression Awareness
Deprivation of Liberty
Display Screen Awareness
Domestic Abuse Level 1
Eating Disorder Awareness
Equality and Diversity
Fire Safety
GDPR
Infection Control (Non-Clinical)
Information Governance
Learning Disabilities Awareness
Mental Capacity Act
Mental Health Awareness
Moving and Handling (Non-Clinical)
Prevent
Principles of Health & Safety
Privacy & Dignity
Records Management
Risk Management
Safeguarding Children Level three (this is face-to-face or via teams and includes LAC)
Safeguarding Vulnerable Adults - Level three
Stress Awareness
Suicide Awareness
Summary Care Records
Whistleblowing
BLS, CPR & Anaphylaxis (carried out face to face)
Other useful information:
What young people have told us is important to them and what a good counsellor would look like:
As part of the engagement for the emotional well-being and mental health service, young people explained what was important to them:
- They want to be listened to
- Don’t want workers to judge them
- Need to trust workers before they can talk to them
- They want to feel supported, comfortable and safe
- They want support to be consistent and people to stick to plans
- To be contacted in different ways
- Have local support.
We asked a group of young people what a good counsellor would look like and they said he/she would:
- Be able to communicate well with young people, not the usual repetitive “how does that make you feel” comments
- Listen and not pressure individuals into telling the personal information of their ‘life story
- Not take notes during the session (so the young people know they are being listened to)
- Be impartial and not judge young people; treat them as equal individuals
- Liaise between young people and adults in order that young people only tell their stories once
- Be dressed smart but casual
- Be relaxed and bond with the young person
- Find different ways to engage the young people and help them to express their feelings (e.g. through speech, music, art etc.)
- Be consistent and not stop counselling suddenly or before the young person wants it to stop
- Be confidential unless there are safeguarding issues
- Not tell individuals how they feel/should feel
- Stay emotionally un-detached to the situations/ circumstances that young people speak to them about
- Not share their experiences with young people as it may make the young person feel like their experience does not mean much
Job Type: Fixed term contract
Contract length: 12 months
Salary: £29,330.00 per year
Benefits:
- Company pension
Schedule:
- Day shift
- Flexitime
Work Location: In person
Reference ID: Children & Young Persons Counsellor
Expected start date: 05/06/2023
