Primary Mental Health Worker - Family Drug and Alcohol Court Team

Team: Family Drug and Alcohol Court (FDAC) Team

Job Family: Supporting - CBG11

Salary: £41,042 - £44,296 per annum pro rata 

Contract: Hybrid - Permanent

Hours: 18.5 hours per week 

Location: You will be expected to attend a CBC office location as often as needed to carry out your role, which will be no less than once per month. This will include Highfield House, The Hawthorns, Flitwick, MK45 1FN.

Closing Date: 6th October 2025

Interview Date: 15th October 2025

About the team

The Family Drug and Alcohol Court (FDAC) is an alternative, more successful form of care proceedings, where parental substance misuse is a concern. It uses a bespoke, problem-solving, trauma informed approach to target individual families’ complex difficulties. Research shows that this model is successful in supporting parents to engage with and stay in substance misuse services leading to more children being able to return home. Where parents do not engage and children cannot return home safely, quicker decisions are made about permanent placements for them. 

The Pan Bedfordshire FDAC works across the three Bedfordshire Local Authorities - Luton, Central Bedfordshire and Bedford. The lead and recruiting Local Authority is Central Bedfordshire Council. The successful applicant will be employed by Central Bedfordshire Council, within the FDAC team and work across Bedfordshire. The FDAC specialist multidisciplinary team is made up of a Team Manager, Clinical Psychologist, Clinical Psychiatrist, Social Workers, a Parental Substance Misuse Specialist, a Domestic Abuse Expert, Primary Mental Health Worker and Business Support Officer.

About the role

In this role, you will:

• Provide specialist knowledge, skills, experience and targeted interventions to parents.
• Contribute to the multidisciplinary formulation of an intervention plan and work with team members and other professionals to mobilise and co-ordinate existing local authority, NHS and independent sector resources to meet the needs identified in parents' care plans. 
• Facilitate one-to-one and small group activity, as appropriate to addressing identified need.
• Access clinical supervision from the FDAC Clinical Psychologist.
• Arrange the monthly FDAC Psychiatric clinic, providing relevant information to the FDAC Psychiatrist and liaising with the FDAC Psychiatrist, parents and FDAC keyworkers to ensure effective psychiatric screens can take place.
• Ensure that the FDAC team are updated on mental health practice developments, local policies, legislation and research.
• Contribute to the development of policies and procedures for the team as requested.
• Work in multidisciplinary and multi-agency settings.
• Contribute to the provision of a safe space for parents to address their difficulties, achieve abstinence and become able to focus on their child and address the concerns about their parenting. 
• Work directly with families, provide effective and first-class intervention.

Clinical work will be completed with parents in the context of Care proceedings, with these interventions being focused on supporting parents to engage with FDAC and address difficulties that led to Care proceedings being issued. This is parent, rather than patient, focused work which is child centred. Clinical work will also aim to prepare parents to engage in therapeutic work with other services beyond Care proceedings.

The successful applicant for the Primary Mental Health Worker role will be able to think and formulate systematically. The work will include exploration of parents' therapeutic readiness and provision of therapy to parents identified as ready for this. The ability to provide Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and person centred counselling is essential. There will be opportunity to train in Narrative Exposure Therapy as well as to develop in other brief trauma focused interventions. Experience in Dialectical Behavioural Therapy would be advantageous. There will be the opportunity to train in and deliver a therapeutic parenting programme. Knowledge of child development and developmental trauma, alongside clinical experience with children would be advantageous.

In this work you will contract with the parent and the FDAC team around information sharing, being clear about boundaries, whilst contributing to the multidisciplinary intervention and assessment of families referred to the service. The work of this role will be focused on promoting parents in their capacity for emotional regulation and interpersonal functioning, supporting them to problem-solve and change patterns of thinking or behaviour as they seek to address their difficulties.

As a member of a multi-disciplinary team, yours and your colleagues’ practice would be enriched through collaborative support of each other and learning from each other’s specialisms. Your role will be to contribute to every child being able to grow up safely and reach their full potential. 

The successful candidate will:

• Hold a relevant professional qualification/ accreditation in either a psychological or therapeutic field, e.g. RMN/ OT or Social Work or Education.
• Have substantial experience of working in a relevant mental health field with experience of delivering short term focussed interventions for families experiencing mental health/emotional wellbeing difficulties.
• Have a driving licence, access to a car during working hours and business insurance.

Join the FDAC team and you’ll enjoy regular working hours, attractive benefits, plus excellent training. This includes specialist courses covering specific areas of interest. Even better, you’ll develop a new level of specialism as you provide a bespoke, problem-solving approach to target individual families’ complex difficulties.