The mental health practitioner will:
• Provide a combined consultation, advice, triage and liaison function, supported by the local community mental health provider;
• Work with patients to:
a. support shared decision-making about self-management;
b. facilitate onward access to treatment services;
c. provide brief psychological interventions, where qualified to do so and where appropriate.
• Work closely with other PCN-based roles to help address the potential range of biopsychosocial needs of patients with mental health problems. This will include the PCN’s MDT, including, for example, PCN clinical pharmacists for medication reviews, and social prescribing link workers for access to community-based support.
• Operate without the need for formal referral from GPs, including accepting some direct bookings where appropriate, subject to agreement on volumes and the mechanism of booking between the PCN and the provider.
• Be supported through the local community mental health services provider by robust clinical governance structures to maintain quality and safety, including supervision where appropriate.
• All MHP roles will be expected to support community mental health transformation initiatives and patients with complex mental health needs.
- Appropriate statutory professional body registration (RMN, OT Certificate, Professional Mental Health/Psychology qualification or a relevant qualification at NVQ Level 3 (e.g. NVQ Level 3 in Mental Health & Social Care) or equivalent, and/or significant experience in mental health support work.
- Experience of working within a mental health setting with clients presenting with common mental health problems.
- Experience of undertaking specialist holistic mental health assessment, risk assessment and formulation and can demonstrate that these skills are maintained.
- Experience of delivering appropriate therapeutic, risk management and relapse prevention interventions in a time-limited manner, to clients with common mental health problems, in line with professional standards and service protocols.
- Enthusiastic and motivated, you will work well as part of a team, but will also able to work independently and have a sound knowledge of interventions offered within an IAPT service.
- You will be a resilient person, organised and able to manage competing demands on your time.
e-Learning for Healthcare
The following resources can be accessed via e-Learning for Healthcare (e-LfH). E-LfH provides free e-learning programmes which can support you in your professional development.
If you do not already have an account, click here to register using your NHS email address. If you already have an account, please use the same link to firstly log in to access the following resources.
- Communication skills for the mental health practitioner: This e-learning programme is for all healthcare workers who support people with mental health needs. It is designed to help healthcare workers improve communication skills to de-escalate difficult situations.
- Breaking down the barriers: This programme aims to support the NHS workforce by providing awareness training materials to enhance existing skills, knowledge for early recognition, assessment, management and signposting of mental and physical health needs of patients.
- Mental Health Crisis Support Training: The Mental Health Crisis Management programme is made up of a series of video clips which show patients talking about their own experiences of living with mental health; their thoughts and feelings on how they are helped or hindered by the individuals involved in their diagnosis, treatment, care and support.
- Self Harm and Common Mental Health Problems: This course focuses on mental health problems in young people and looks at how this can present itself with a focus on self harm.
- Work and Health: Mental Health: This session discusses the positive impact of physical activity on mental health conditions.
- Person Centred Approaches: The aim of the course is to enable staff to behave in a person-centred way, based on the person-centred approaches framework, which aims to distil best practice and to set out core, transferable behaviours, knowledge and skills.
- Five Ways to Wellbeing: The New Economics Foundation (NEF) developed the ‘Five Ways to Wellbeing’ framework - a set of evidence-based actions to improve people’s wellbeing. These five actions are give, be active, keep learning, connect, take notice. This course introduces the concept of wellbeing and describes how the Five Ways to Wellbeing can be implemented in a variety of settings to promote it.
This list is not exhaustive and the programmes available are regularly updated, so we recommend visiting the e-LfH portal and reviewing the available resources via using the “View full catalogue” function, or the “Search the e-learning" function.
Mental Health Practitioners should be given the opportunity during supervision for questions and discussion. Clinical Supervision of Mental Health Practitioners can be conducted by:
- Experienced Mental Health Practitioner
- GP
- ACP (3+ years)
Awaiting further guidance and information.
Please see below Supervision guidance as supported by the PCI, and provided by NHSEI.
Whatuni? provide a guide of Mental Health Nursing courses linked here.
Appropriate statutory professional body registration (RMN, OT Certificate, Professional Mental Health/Psychology qualification or a relevant qualification at NVQ Level 3 (e.g. NVQ Level 3 in Mental Health and Social Care) or equivalent, and/or significant experience in mental health support work.
Local providers of NVQ Level 3 in Health and Social Care:
The Mental Health Practitioner may be any registered clinical role operating at Agenda for Change Band 4 or above including, but not limited to, a Community Psychiatric Nurse, Clinical Psychologist, Mental Health Occupational Therapist or other clinical registered role, as agreed between the PCN and community mental health service provider.
Deployment Arrangements
The mental health practitioner role will be employed and provided under a local service agreement by the PCN’s local provider of community mental health services, and embedded within the PCN. PCNs will be entitled to a service equivalent to one FTE practitioner for PCNs under or at 99,999 registered population; and two for PCNs larger than that. PCNs will contribute 50% of the salary and the other 50% will be funded by the Mental Health Provider delivering the service.
The final NHS Standard Contract will include obligations on all community mental health providers to provide the mental health practitioner role on this basis. If needed, the CCG will broker agreement between the PCN and community mental health provider on the detail of deployment arrangements.
In addition to the adult and older adults’ role, the PCN and it's local community Mental Health Provider may additionally agree to the provision of a service to support children and young people’s mental health. Where this is agreed locally, the PCN will be entitled to claim reimbursement for the level of which is to be agreed with the commissioner.
Professional Bodies Resources
The Nursing & Midwifery Council provide a range of resources for Mental Health Nurses at various stages of their career.
Role Overview
Health Careers have provided this resource which contains the requirements to begin the role, the possibilities once in the role and some case studies of mental health nurses.
Health Careers have provided this resource which contains the requirements of the role, main duties, salary, skills and benefits of being a Mental Health Practitioner.
This updated DES 2024/25 outlines the role of the Mental Health Practitioner and what is expected from PCNs (page 106-107).
A collection of the most frequently asked question relating to Mental Health Practitioners.
To hear about what it’s like to work as a Mental Health Practitioner, read Lisa's Blog (Clinical Services Manager and PCN Clinical Lead working as an approved Mental Health Professional).
Tools for Practice
This framework describes how the Long Term Plan’s vision for a place-based community mental health model can be realised, and how community services should modernise to offer whole-person, whole-population health approaches, aligned with the new Primary Care Networks.
The guidance produced by NHS England covers purposeful admissions, delivery of therapeutic interventions and activities, and discharge planning, in a way that is personalised, trauma-informed and advances health equality for adults and older adults.
NHS Practitioner Health has produced a fully customised mental wellbeing app tailored to the needs of our patients. This will enable you to monitor and track your own wellbeing and identify areas where you might need some additional support.
The Mental Health Implementation Plan 2019/2020 - 2023/24, created by NHS England.
A new Mental Health, Learning Disability and Autism Inpatient Quality Transformation Programme was established in 2022 to support cultural change and a new bold, reimagined model of care for the future across all NHS-funded mental health, learning disability and autism inpatient settings.
NHS England has developed new guidance to support improved joint working between NHS Talking Therapies for anxiety and depression and Community Mental Health (CMH) services. The guidance sets out the key barriers preventing seamless care between these services, provides clarity on national policy expectations for supporting people seeking help, as well as good practice guides and case examples to support improved care.
The standards describe a collective vision for mental health inpatient services through the application of 12 core commitments, and associated standards for each. The application of the standards in inpatient services, from board to ward, is supported by the Culture of Care Programme delivered by our partners, the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health.
This mandatory framework will support trusts and providers on their journeys to becoming actively anti-racist organisations by ensuring that they are responsible for co-producing and implementing concrete actions to reduce racial inequalities within their services. It will become part of Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspections.
Core20PLUS5 is part of the Health Inequalities Programme, a national NHS England approach to support the reduction of health inequalities at both national and system level. The approach defines a target population cohort – the ‘Core20PLUS’ – and identifies ‘5’ focus clinical areas requiring accelerated improvement. The e-learning modules cover narrowing health inequalities in: hypertension, early cancer diagnosis, chronic respiratory disease, maternity and sever mental illness.
The Behaviour Change Development Framework and Toolkit can help you decide what sort of behaviour change training and planning is needed to effectively support people to make positive changes in their lives. The framework consists of an assessment to discover what level of behaviour change training you should be trained at, e-learning to help reach Behaviour Change Literacy (BCL) level, toolkits to access a range of tools and resources to help you develop and change behaviours and competency to discover learning and competencies that are required for each level of the Behaviour Change Development Framework.
Relevant Research
Produced by the HEE Knowledge Management team, the Evidence Brief offers a quick overview of the published reports, research and evidence on the Mental Health Workforce.
Jobs
If you are looking for a new position related to this role, we recommend checking both NHS Jobs and HealthjobsUK.
NHS Jobs is the official online recruitment service for the NHS in England and Wales, with over 30,000 jobs posted every month.
Hosted by trac.jobs, HealthJobsUK is among the leading job boards in the health and public sector within the UK.
