Senior Mental Health Practitioner - Duty Worker

Job summary

We are excited to be recruiting three fixed-term Band 6 Senior Mental Health Practitioners to support our countywide Duty offer within Children and Family Health Devon (CFHD). This one-year pilot role is an opportunity for experienced mental health professionals to play a key role in the duty system, supporting mental health teams and providing a first point of contact for urgent queries.

This role is countywide, supporting young people struggling with mood, emotions, and relationships across multiple locality teams. You will work closely with multi-disciplinary teams, external agencies, and families, ensuring that children and young people receive timely and effective support. Some aspects of the role can be carried out remotely, and we are happy to consider flexible working arrangements.

As a Duty Worker, you will manage incoming queries, assess risk, and provide guidance and signposting where appropriate. This is a dynamic and evolving role within a newly developed pathway, helping to shape how mental health teams respond to urgent concerns and referrals.

We offer:

• Comprehensive training and supervision to support your development.
• A collaborative and supportive team dedicated to delivering high-quality mental health care.
• A varied and fast-paced role, making a direct impact on children and young people in Devon.

If you are a highly organised and experienced mental health professional with strong assessment and communication skills, we would love to hear from you.

Main duties of the job

• Gather and assess information from callers, offering guidance, signposting, or escalation as needed.
• Conduct brief risk assessments, which may include speaking with the young person and/or their parent/carer to fully understand the situation.
• Review new information about children and young people who do not have an allocated worker or whose worker is unavailable.
• Respond to urgent queries from internal teams and external agencies, offering clinical advice and signposting as required.
• Support the triage process, ensuring urgent concerns are addressed appropriately and efficiently.
• Contribute to service development, providing feedback on how the duty system can be improved to best support children and young people.
• Maintain accurate clinical records, ensuring compliance with safeguarding and data protection protocols.

This role is ideal for a compassionate and proactive mental health professional who thrives in a fast-paced, decision-making environment and wants to contribute to the development of an essential service within CFHD.

About us

Successful applicants will be employed by Devon Partnership Trust (https://jobs.dpt.nhs.uk/locations/working-here )

Children and Family Health Devon (CFHD) comprises an Alliance of NHS organisations working together to improve health outcomes for children and young people in Devon.

CFHD provides integrated care and treatment for children and young people across physical and mental health. We are working closely with other organisations and providers to ensure we deliver locality and county-wide based integrated access to all of our services, based on the i-Thrive Framework, in response to consultation with our service users and communities.

CFHD works closely with our local universities of Plymouth, Exeter & the Peninsula Medical School where we support students in clinical training placements and in addition support our own staff to undertake post graduate training.

Our children and young people say

We would like the people who work for Children and Family Health Devon to be understanding, patient and respectful. They should be trustworthy and make us feel safe and comfortable. It is important that they use their skills and experience to listen carefully in a non-patronising and non-judgemental way. When staff are positive and friendly, they help to create an environment that is informal and without pressure.

Our vision is to be a successful, vibrant, partnership that benefits the communities we serve.