Young People's Counsellor

Brandon Centre

This job is now closed

Job summary

Provide a new brief counselling provision within the Brandon Centre's sexual health service which will connect with and support up to 130 vulnerable young people aged 12-25 living in Camden per year. These young people would not think - or be confident - to self-refer for emotional support and statutory support may not be reaching them or be appropriate for them.

This role will offer rapid access to counselling that will:

o Offer immediate emotional and motivational support

o Increase the young person's likelihood of engaging in conversations of a wellbeing/mental health context in the future

o Provide a bridge to more in-depth therapy if needed

This service will be an integrated offer between our mental health and sexual health service, which delivers Level 2 services including testing/treatment for STIs, contraception and advice, referral to level 3 services. Being 'Nurse Led' our service offer is perceived as less 'transactional' and often more personable.

Main duties of the job

Counselling will be provided via the appointment system, having on average 1 to 4 sessions of 50 minutes duration each and at intervals that will be tailored to the emerging needs of the young person.

To support these young people's understanding of their mental wellbeing and improve ability and confidence to address issues and/or seek help.

To increase capacity within our sexual health clinic; young people attend our sexual health services in increasing numbers displaying a wide range of anxieties and wellbeing issues.

To increase integration of our sexual health and mental health services to improve holistic support for young people attending all BC services.

About us

The principal objective of Brandon Centre is to provide a professional, accessible, and flexible service which responds to the psychological, medical, sexual and social needs of young people under 25 years and their families.

The services we provide are:

- Mental Health Services including individual Counselling & Psychotherapy for young people, Systemic Integrative Treatment for families using a range of evidence-based therapies and therapeutic work and therapeutic outreach work in community settings

- Sexual Health Services including contraception, drop in and outreach sessions

- Clinical Training and Consultancy including healthy living, parent programmes and other group work

Date posted

23 July 2021

Pay scheme

Other

Salary

£30,000 a year

Contract

Permanent

Working pattern

Part-time

Reference number

B0129-21-3159

Job locations

26 Prince of Wales Rd

Kentish Town

London

NW5 3LG

Job description

Job responsibilities

Job Title: Young Peoples Counsellor (Camden) BACP/UKCP registered/accredited

Contract: Permanent Contract

Hours:18 hours; the Counsellor will work across our Sexual Health clinic opening hours at times to be agreed, flexing to provide best uptake as the project progresses.

We are open Monday to Friday 10.30am to 5.30pm, for one late evening per week and on Saturdays from June onwards.

Location: Brandon Centre, Kentish Town, NW5

Reports to: Heads of Mental Health and Sexual Health

Accountability:CEO

Principal Duties and Responsibilities

1. Provide accessible emotional support to up to 130 young people in Camden per year who otherwise might not engage with mental health/wellbeing services and thereby prevent young peoples' emotional issues from deteriorating into a crisis.

2. Ensure some counselling capacity is retained to support immediate crisis counselling for young people who attend our services in obvious distress.

3. Refer young people identified with complex needs to the project's therapy provision after initial assessment.

4. Work as part of our Sexual Health team, supporting young people's emerging wellbeing issues. These may be directly related to sexual health such as risk behaviours e.g. poor contraceptive compliance, or body image, pregnancy, STIs and HIV testing - or more general wellbeing concerns such as mild/moderate anxiety, friendship and relationship issues, family, school and/or employment worries. These young people may not be being seen by any other professional.

5. Provide counselling for an increasing number of young people within our sexual health service (many young women) who present with high levels of vulnerability resulting from child exploitation or abuse, experimenting with sale of sex, substance misuse, FGM, forced marriage and gang involvement.

6. Work closely with the Sexual Health team to develop and support an efficient referral process for the counselling service, via our sexual health clinic admissions/reception team/drop in (Covid restrictions allowing) or telephone system.

7. Develop a close working relationship with the Sexual Health Team and Outreach Team to ensure all referrals are managed effectively in a timely way.

8. Be responsible for and maintain records for each young person accessing counselling support.

9. Work closely with the Sexual Health Inclusivity Outreach Team to ensure appropriate referrals for counselling are received from vulnerable young people, including LGBTQ+ YPs.

10. Ensure our Sexual Health Wellbeing Questionnaire is refined to include this new projects inclusion criteria and completed in a timely way.

11. Implement the YP-CORE or CORE-10 outcome measures at the young persons first appointment and again in their final session.

12. Use the Goal Based Measure at the beginning of treatment to develop and monitor goals with young people attending more than one counselling session.

13. Discharge young people from the service when it is agreed the issue is understood, resolved and coping strategy in place and/or referred onwards to more specialist support organisations with whom we have robust referral/signposting pathways co-ordinated by our mental health lead and front office team.

14. Ensure young people are followed up at 3, 6, and 12-month intervals. This post will ensure measurement of sustained progress against our outcomes will be supported by further emotional wellbeing survey at 3, 6, and 12 months, both within any clinical/Sexual Health appointments and also sought electronically.

15. Ensure a post service questionnaire (Chi-Esq) is implemented (sent electronically where appropriate), at and after 'discharge' from the service to ascertain levels of satisfaction and learning fed into project processes.

16. Post discharge, the Counsellor as part of the project team will monitor young peoples ongoing engagement with our referral/signposting organisations to better evaluate sustained outcomes, e.g., levels of uptake or even return to our service, demonstrating YP's improved ability to recognise their own emotional/wellbeing needs, and readiness to take positive action to find help.

17. Encourage our beneficiaries to become Young Ambassadors for the Brandon Centre. Ensure this is included in the evaluation of this project work with young participants encouraged to become involved in service user feedback events, becoming young ambassadors and involved in our developing Young People's Forum.

18. Establish and maintain project plans and report progress at regular intervals to the Line Manager. Reports will cover progress against project outcomes, issues and risks, service user feedback. Reports to the Board of Trustees will be made quarterly and to the Funder as required.

19. Responsible for the appropriate collection of quantitative data (e.g., numbers attending the service, attrition, numbers of participating young people supported to attend other services, numbers of young people attending through Sexual Health Outreach, numbers receiving crisis/immediate support). The Front Office Team will support this work and ensure key information is logged every week onto our new IT Patient Source system and Atlas Health and Safety platform.

20. Ensure all activities are undertaken in line with Brandon Centre COVID Risk Assessments and within Government COVID alert levels.