FULL JOB DESCRIPTION
Employer:Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
Position:Senior Support Worker
Salary:£28392.00 to £31157.00 Yearly
Job Type: Full Time, Part time
Work location:Portsmouth, South East England, England
The closing date is 15th Nov 2026
Are you passionate about improving the mental health and wellbeing of children, young people, and their families? Do you enjoy working collaboratively within a supportive multidisciplinary team? If so, we would love to hear from you.
An exciting opportunity has arisen for a motivated and compassionate Senior Support Worker to join our CAMHS Early Help Team at Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (HIOWH).
The Early Help Team provides timely support and interventions for children, young people, and families, helping to improve emotional wellbeing and prevent the escalation of mental health difficulties. As a Senior Support Worker, you will play a key role in supporting the delivery of high-quality, evidence-based care and interventions across the service.
Working alongside clinicians and other members of the multidisciplinary team, you will facilitate the development and delivery of care and interventions within the Early Help Team. Your role will contribute to the full range of routine care tasks and support the effective delivery of services for children, young people, and families.
Main duties, tasks & skills required
The Band 4 Senior Support Worker role will involve a wide range of work, such as:
- Supporting facilitating groups
- Supporting with organising interventions, running waiting lists, gathering and sharing data
- Analysing data alongside team members to improve services
-Working on duty – supporting clinicians with tasks and completing routine work
- Supporting community outreach events such as Parent and Carer Events (PACE)
- Supporting with assessment of young people’s needs
- Liaison with other professionals and networks such as children’s services and schools.
- Engaging in multi-disciplinary meetings
- Sharing service updates with the team
- Signposting to external services and writing correspondence to young people and families
About us
Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust provides joined-up mental and physical healthcare for around two million people across our communities. With over 13,000 staff working in the community and local hospitals, we deliver care at every stage of life, helping people live their best and healthiest lives.
Our mental health services include community-based support and early intervention in psychosis (EIP) for both adults and young people, alongside a network of specialist inpatient wards covering forensic, learning disability, eating disorder and older person’s care.
We deliver extensive physical health services too, from urgent community response teams helping frail and older patients remain safely at home, to hospitals at home teams providing acute-level care in familiar surroundings. Our neurological services offer rehabilitation and treatment for conditions including Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s Disease, Motor Neurone Disease, Head Injury, Cerebral Palsy and Stroke. Across Hampshire, our community hospitals provide inpatient rehabilitation as a step down from acute care, and our dedicated teams also staff Treetops Sexual Assault Referral Centre in Portsmouth, offering expert, compassionate support.
Everything we do is underpinned by our CARE values of compassion, accountability, respect and excellence
Job description
Further information about the Trust and this role can be found on the Job Description and Person Specification document attached. It is important to us that we ensure our recruitment processes are accessible and inclusive to everyone – if as a potential candidate you are concerned a person specification may prevent or restrict your application for employment as a result of unintentional barriers on the grounds of your sex, race, age, sexual orientation, religion/belief or disability please initially contact the Trust’s Recruitment team – detailed in the advert. The Trust will seek to resolve this issue wherever possible.
We are happy to talk Flexible Working – all requests for flexible working options can be discussed as part of the interview process.
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential
Batchelors degree in a relevant subject (e.g., psychology, social policy, health sciences) at 2:2 or above.
Or
Batchelors degree in any subject plus additional training and/or experience in health and social care.
Or
Equivalent levels of experience working in a healthcare setting.
Care Certificate (or complete this within the first 12 weeks in post).
Experience
Essential
Experience of working with people with mental health needs in a paid or voluntary capacity.
- Experience working as part of a team.
- Experience of analysing and communicating complex information verbally and in writing.
- Able to establish and maintain empathic, supportive relationships with people in significant distress or their families and carers.
- Ability to speak sensitively with staff and clients in person and on the telephone. Ability to communicate effectively.
- Able to receive, understand and communicate confidential client information of a sensitive and often complex nature, including discussing care with family members within boundaries of confidentiality
– Awareness of the importance of confidentiality – ability to work within appropriate boundaries.
- Able to communicate in a sensitive and reassuring manner, with empathy, and where appropriate reassurance.
- Able to make good use of clinical supervision in a group and/or individual format.
- Ability to use good judgement skills when supporting service users / carers enquiries and problems.
- Familiar with different IT systems.
- Able to deal with conflicting demands in an unpredictable work pattern.
- Ability to process client information; this will require you to be desk based for long periods of time.
- Able to prioritise workload according to peoples’ changing needs and the priorities of the team
- Ability to work collaboratively within a team.
- Able to deal with a range of clients presenting with mental health difficulties, their supporters and the clinical team on a daily basis.
- Able to concentrate on specific activities for up to an hour at a time.
- Able to work flexibly and adapt to each person as appropriate to their needs in a variety of settings
- Liaise with other teams and services including external agencies as required for the wellbeing of service users.
Additional Criteria
Essential
Approach / Values
-Commitment to team working – and ability to work successfully within a team.
- Ability to travel across sites. You must be able to do so independently using public transport and/or your own vehicle, as appropriate. (Please note that we do not reimburse taxi fares).
- Punctual and flexible across hours of work when required.
- Able to be flexible with office-based working with a team of skilled professionals or working remotely using technology to communicate with others.
What our services users expect of this post holder
- Demonstrate support for the values and beliefs of the Care Group and those of the Trust.
- Demonstrate an understanding of the practices of Human Rights in the delivery of this role.
- Ability to demonstrate respect, empathy and dignity towards service users.
Disclosure and Barring Service Check
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.
For help with your application, contact:
Samantha Crebo
samantha.crebo1@nhs.net
