7.5 hours per week (1 day) term-time only / £33,130 per annum pro rata / Permanent / Working ideally on Thursday but other days can potentially be discussed.
Our mission is to help children and young people have a fair chance to be who they want to be. We do this by providing a safe home, increasing life skills and self-confidence, and improving emotional wellbeing and mental health.
Established in 1996, Dialogue School Counselling is a BACP accredited school counselling service covering Sussex and Surrey.
We are recruiting for an experienced and qualified counsellor with experience of working with young people with SEN in a school environment to join our team and deliver the school counselling service at The Hive Centre in Brighton.
The Hive Centre is an educational provision run by Hill Park School. The Hive is a small, bespoke provision for autistic secondary aged students with high anxiety and sensory needs but who are working at mainstream levels. It is called The Hive because the aim is to provide a small and safe learning environment; a feeling of community for the young people and their families; and a place of belonging and growth. They offer an adapted mainstream secondary curriculum in small classes of around 8 students. There is a strong focus on emotional wellbeing for everyone at the Hive with a trauma-informed and person centred approach.
We are seeking a qualified counsellor who is passionate about making a difference to lives of the children and young people they work with. You will have a keen interest in and experience of working with young people of secondary school age with SEN.
You will provide ethical, professional counselling/therapy to children and young people in the school setting. Students will be offered creative and flexible ways of working therapeutically, where they can talk, make art, or play games; using creative activities to help them express things that might be worrying them.
Key responsibilities
- Provide individual sessions with students and some small group work, as agreed with the school and Dialogue manager.
- Promote the service to school staff; this may involve attending staff meetings and/ or school assemblies to talk about the counselling role.
- Proven experience working with children and young people with SEN.
- Run a suitable appointment system flexible to the needs of the school, offering students appropriate assessments and counselling appointments
- Work flexibly and creatively with students with SEN needs, to increase accessibility to the service
- Manage the tight time boundaries of the role and the often complex and varied workload
- Liaise with school staff over referrals, waiting lists and appointments
- Carry out initial clinical and risk assessments and establish appropriate referral pathways with other services where appropriate. Continually assess risk throughout each student’s counselling.
- Follow YMCA Dialogue safeguarding procedures; to know who the School’s Designated Safeguarding Officer/s is and how to contact them when a safeguarding concern arises
- Work at all times within the BACP Ethical Framework for the Counselling Professions
- Maintain individual membership of the BACP (or other professional body such as HCPC)
- You will establish good professional working relationships with key school staff
ABOUT YOU: We know that there are great candidates who will not fit everything described, or who have important skills we have not mentioned. If that is you, please do not hesitate to apply and tell us about yourself.
Qualifications, knowledge, and experience
- You will have a Counselling or Psychotherapy qualification, minimum Level four and ideally Level six, and two years’ post qualifying experience in individual counselling or therapy with young people. This will include working with risk issues
- You will also have a sound understanding of child protection and vulnerable adult safeguarding issues, policies, and procedures
- You will have proven experience in safeguarding children and young people; responding to, managing, and referring safeguarding issues
- You will have a BACP Membership; BACP Registered or Accredited. Or other professional body e.g. HCPC
- You will have a keen interest in working with children and will be familiar with using creative therapeutic approaches, along with experience of working in a school setting
- You will have experience working therapeutically with children & young people with SEN and high anxiety