Trainee Children's Wellbeing Practitioner

Job Purpose: To work, under supervision, delivering evidence-based interventions for children and young people experiencing mild-moderate anxiety, low mood and behavioural difficulties. This will involve working individually with children or young people (5-18 years) and involving their parent(s)/caregivers as appropriate, offering psychoeducation workshops and co-facilitating therapeutic groupwork. Trainee Children’s Wellbeing Practitioners (CWPs) will be expected to integrate into YMCA East Surrey’s Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health (EWMH) team and to support all early intervention work.

This Trainee Children's Wellbeing Practitioner role includes completion of the Child Wellbeing Practice Postgraduate or Graduate level Diploma run by the University of Sussex, which follows the nationally agreed curriculum to qualify as a Children's Wellbeing Practitioner. This year the course will run from 7th Jan 2025, for 12 months, with 2 taught days at university per week, with some university holiday weeks built in, followed by time to consolidate skills and meet the final academic deadline for the course in January 2026. The teaching is a blend of in-person and online, with the majority of teaching in-person.

Participation in this course involves learning the theory, and then translating this into practice in your service and covers a wide range of materials over 8 taught modules. There are a variety of assessment modes to assess the required knowledge and competencies. This training equips the student to acquire relevant knowledge to be an effective community mental health professional, working with children, young people, and their parents/carers. It provides the trainee with the opportunity to gain competence in the core skills needed to assess and formulate mild to moderate mental health difficulties with children and young people (CYP), before being able to then learn the skills to work with them, using a specific cognitive-behaviourally informed therapeutic intervention to meet the identified mental health need.

The trainee will learn therapeutic interventions to use 1:1 with children and young people and in group settings; ways to work with parents and carers of CYP with anxiety and worry, or those with behaviours that challenge; how to engage CYP, parents/carers and staff working with CYP in psychoeducation workshops to promote mental wellbeing for CYP. Students will also learn the thresholds for guided self-help for CYP, direct low-intensity intervention work, and when to refer on to other services within the local area.

Hours of work:  Full time - 35 hours per week

Working Pattern: 9:00am – 5:00pm, Monday – Friday (one hour per day for lunch which is unpaid

Contract Type: Fixed term training contract (dependent on completion of the course).

Course to start January 2025 and finish approximately end of January 2026 when all coursework has been completed.

Location: Phoenix Youth Centre, Tadworth, but working across various locations in East Surrey, as necessary.

Attendance at University of Sussex 2 days per week from Jan to October.

Annual leave:  Five weeks plus bank holidays (pro-rata for part time workers) Holidays increase after two years’ service to a maximum of six weeks after six years’ service.  (pro-rata for part time workers)

The holiday year runs from 1  April to 31 March each year.

Benefits:

Free Gym Membership: The post holder will be entitled to free use of the YMCA East Surrey fitness centre in Redhill and half price YMCA childcare for dependents.

Free Parking : There is free parking available  at all our delivery site. YMCA East Surrey also operates a Bike to Work Scheme.

Pension Scheme: There is a YMCA East Surrey pension scheme - details available on request.

Proposed Start Date: January 2025