Job summary
Band 8a MHST Operational Manager Mental Health Support Teams | North Chelmsford, Braintree & Tendring Base: Stapleford House, Chelmsford Help us lead the next phase of MHST expansion across Essex An exciting opportunity has arisen for an experienced and enthusiastic Band 8a Operational Manager to join our established Mental Health Support Team (MHST) service at a significant point in its continued growth. You will be joining ahead of a major recruitment and mobilisation programme for our incoming new MHSTs, giving you a unique opportunity to help shape, build and support the new teams from the outset. Working alongside the MHST Head of Service, Clinical Leads and an experienced team of MHST managers, you will take a key operational leadership role in the development and mobilisation of services across the North Chelmsford, Braintree and Tendring areas. The role will be based at Stapleford House, Chelmsford, with travel across the locality as required.
Main duties of the job
What are Mental Health Support Teams? MHSTs work in partnership with schools, colleges and the wider children and young people’s system to provide early mental health and emotional wellbeing support for children and young people. The service provides timely, accessible and evidence-based interventions, working collaboratively with children, young people, parents, carers and education settings. The Operational Manager has an important role in ensuring that services are safe, effective, responsive and well integrated with the wider mental health and wellbeing system. MHSTs include Education Mental Health Practitioners (EMHPs) alongside a wider multidisciplinary workforce, and a key part of this role will be creating the operational environment in which both established and newly recruited staff can develop and thrive. The Job Description specifically identifies supporting EMHPs, trainees and senior staff, as well as ensuring effective induction, orientation, mentorship and development arrangements for new colleagues.
About us
NELFT NHS Foundation Trust provides mental health and community services for over 4.9 million people living in the London Boroughs of Waltham Forest, Redbridge, Barking and Dagenham, Havering, and across Essex. We work to ensure our patients, their friends and family, feel confident that their health needs are well met. With an excellent reputation for research and development, our skilled health professionals are at the cutting edge of evidence-based innovation, opening up the possibilities for better ways of working and delivery of care.
Job responsibilities
A key role in our next phase of expansion
This post will be onboarded ahead of a significant recruitment programme for our new MHSTs, and we are therefore particularly looking for someone with strong experience and knowledge of:
- Recruitment and workforce mobilisation
- HR and people management processes
- Onboarding and induction of new staff
- Supporting staff through periods of significant service growth and change
- Operational and workforce planning
- Complex project management
- Building effective, supportive and high‑performing teams
Experience of complex project management and managing major changes in service provision are essential requirements within the person specification, alongside effective leadership, staff and budget management, analytical skills and the ability to motivate teams through new challenges.
You will work closely with our recruitment and HR colleagues and the wider MHST leadership team to help ensure our new services have the right workforce in place, at the right time, with the right support around them.
Supporting our future EMHP workforce
A particularly important element of the role will be supporting our newly recruited EMHP trainees as they begin their journey within MHST.
You will help ensure that trainees and newly appointed colleagues receive a positive introduction to the service, have effective induction and support arrangements in place and feel part of both their individual MHST and the wider Essex MHST programme.
The Operational Manager is expected to ensure trainees are actively supported to meet their learning needs and to support new staff to integrate successfully into the team.
Welcoming new schools into MHST
As our teams expand, so will the number of education settings we work alongside.
Working collaboratively with the MHST leadership team, you will support the onboarding of new schools across North Chelmsford, Braintree and Tendring, building strong relationships with education partners and ensuring that expansion is well planned, coordinated and communicated.
Partnership working is fundamental to the role, with key relationships including education settings, primary care, local authorities, voluntary sector organisations and wider children’s services.
What will you bring?
We are looking for an operational leader who is enthusiastic, organised, visible and comfortable working at pace.
You will need to be someone who can balance the immediate practicalities of recruitment and mobilisation with the longer‑term task of building sustainable, high‑quality teams.
You will bring:
- Strong operational leadership and people management skills
- Experience of recruitment, HR processes and workforce planning
- Experience of managing substantial service development or change
- Strong project management and mobilisation skills
- Confidence managing staffing, performance, budgets and resources
- An ability to build relationships across professional and organisational boundaries
- A supportive leadership style, particularly when working with newly recruited and developing staff
- Excellent communication, analytical and problem‑solving skills
- An understanding of mental health provision within schools and the wider children’s mental health system
- The ability to maintain momentum, manage competing priorities and turn plans into delivery.
The post also requires a professionally registered, post‑graduate qualified psychological practitioner or graduate‑qualified healthcare professional, alongside relevant management experience, as set out fully within the person specification.
You won’t be doing this alone
Although this is a significant leadership role, you will be joining an already established and experienced Essex MHST service.
You will work alongside the Head of Service, Clinical Leads and a wider group of experienced MHST Operational Managers, providing an established leadership network with colleagues who understand the opportunities and challenges of growing MHST services.
This means you will have the opportunity to bring your own leadership experience and ideas while also benefiting from the knowledge, support and learning of managers who are already successfully leading MHSTs across Essex.
The role works particularly closely with the Head of Service and Locality Clinical Lead to ensure the effective day‑to‑day running of services, alongside responsibility for workforce planning, finance, staff in training, performance and longer‑term sustainability.
Why join us?
This is an exciting opportunity to join MHST at a genuinely formative stage of our next phase of development.
You will have the opportunity not simply to manage an existing service, but to help build new teams, welcome new schools, support the development of our future EMHP workforce and shape how our expanding services operate from the very beginning.
If you are an enthusiastic and experienced operational leader who enjoys developing people, building services and turning ambitious plans into effective delivery, we would love to hear from you.
Base: Stapleford House, Chelmsford Locality: North Chelmsford, Braintree & Tendring Band: 8a Role: MHST Operational Manager
Our Values 2025 – 2030
Working with our colleagues, patients and carers we have co‑produced three new values that we aim to embed within our culture here at NELFT. They are:
- We are kind.
- We are respectful.
- We work together with our communities.
Starting with NELFT
NELFT place a great deal of importance on new starters being properly welcomed and inducted into the Trust. All new starters will join the Trust on the first Monday of each month and will undertake a comprehensive induction of up to two weeks which will include mandatory training, systems training and the allocation of equipment. As part of the process new starters will have the opportunity to also meet the executive team, senior managers, and attend a number of drop‑in sessions focusing on engagement, health and wellbeing and key processes. The induction will be held at our head office in Goodmayes Hospital.
Probationary Period This post will be subject to a probationary period.
Certificates of Sponsorship Although we are a registered sponsor organisation, we are unable to offer sponsorship for all job roles. Please check your eligibility under the UKVI points‑based system. When calculating the basic salary for sponsorship, HCAS (High‑Cost Area Supplement) is not included to ensure fairness and consistency within our Trust.
Use of AI
We value applications that genuinely reflect each candidate’s own skills, experience and motivations. We therefore strongly discourage the use of AI‑generated content in applications. We also strongly encourage applicants to be bold and authentic when applying for the role. Use of any AI‑generated content in your CV and cover letter will be considered a form of misrepresentation.
Person Specification
Qualifications
Essential
- Please refer to JD
Desirable
- Please refer to JD
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.
We are an equal opportunities employer and welcome applications from all sections of the community.
#J-18808-Ljbffr…