Go back South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust
Behaviour Support Practitioner
The closing date is 03 June 2026
We are looking for a Behaviour Support Practitioner, to work within a newly developed IST pathway in the Mental Health & Learning Disabilities Service (MHLD). You will be expected to work directly and indirectly with people with learning disabilities, families, and carers providing person-centred specialist behavioural assessments and interventions, using a Positive Behavioural Support approach. You will be part of a small intensive support pathway which is part of a friendly community-based MDT and wider staff group of Psychologists and Behavioural Support Practitioners across the MHLD service. You will provide clinical interventions that are focused on the person and the whole network supporting that person, to develop and deliver support within the person’s home and community.
Main duties of the job
As a Specialist Practitioner Behaviour Support Practitioner in our IST pathway, within Lambeth Mental Health & Learning Disability Service (MHLD), you will be a member of a multi-disciplinary community team working together primarily to:
- Provide applied behavioural assessment and intervention for clients who present behaviour that challenges services and poses risks to their well-being, including specialist assessment, treatment, planning, implementation and monitoring of outcomes.
- Employ the principles of Positive Behavioural Support in all aspects of clinical work.
- Participate in strengthening local services and developing capable environments through training, consultation and modelling.
The teams do this through the early management of identified complex situations. This will include detailed risk assessment and management underpinned by a positive behaviour support model.
About us
As a Behaviour Support Practitioner in our team, you will be part of a well-established group of around 20 Psychologists and Behavioural Support Practitioners, working across the MHLD services, led by the Borough Consultant Clinical Psychologist, providing a range of psychological assessments and interventions for people with learning disabilities and their networks. You will receive supervision from a qualified psychologist, and have opportunities to work jointly with psychologists and colleagues. You will be expected to make use of regular CPD sessions within the Trust, and to contribute to teaching, training and/or supervision initiatives aimed at developing PBS approach across and outside the Trust.
This is a permanent full time post in Lambeth MHLD, based at Maudsley Hospital. Job share arrangements are possible for applicants wanting to work part time.
We have close links with the Estia Centre, a specialist training, research and development resource for people who support adults with learning disabilities, and you will be expected to co‑facilitate some of the training sessions for local providers. We are part of a Clinical Academic Group within Kings Partners Academic Health Sciences Centre, and research interests and joint initiatives aimed at improving the physical and mental health care for people with learning disabilities are encouraged. There are opportunities to help develop and deliver training and consultation to provider services as part of your work.
Job responsibilities
Job Purpose:
- Provide applied behavioural assessment and intervention for clients who present behaviour that challenges services and poses risks to their well-being, including specialist assessment, treatment, planning, implementation and monitoring of outcomes.
- Employ the principles of Positive Behavioural Support in all aspects of clinical work alongside MDT colleagues.
- Participate in strengthening local services and developing capable environments through training, consultation and modelling.
- Contribute to enabling other staff, service users and carers from diverse backgrounds to flourish by working to create a psychologically safe environment.
- Provide clinical supervision and consultation as appropriate.
- Participate in service evaluation, audit and research.
- Work as an autonomous professional within professional and Trust guidelines and codes of conduct, and guided by the policies and procedures of the service, taking responsibility for own work including treatment and discharge decisions with support of clinical supervisor.
- Plan and facilitate staff training and teaching, and presentations as appropriate.
Person Specification
Experience/Knowledge
- Experience and knowledge of applied behavioural assessment and treatment of clients with a range of needs of a complex nature.
- Experience that supports working with, and addressing issues of, diversity within local communities. This may have been gained through work, research, volunteering and/or lived experience.
- Experience and knowledge of the practice of Positive Behavioural Support.
- Lived experience of mental health or learning disabilities challenges.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s Degree followed by PG Diploma in Applied Behaviour Analysis, or Analysis.
Abilities
- Ability to work effectively within a multi-disciplinary team, contributing to effective team functioning and holding team roles.
- Ability to manage emotionally stressful situations such as working with victims of abuse or trauma, or with people who engage in severe self‑harming or aggressive behaviour.
- Ability to manage verbal aggression and hostility directed at self as well as manage physical aggression directed at self, including use of de‑escalation techniques and personal safety procedures as prescribed by Trust policies.
Skills
- Deliver Applied Behaviour Analysis and Positive Behavioural Support across cultural and other differences.
- Communicate skilfully and sensitively complex and sensitive information with clients, carers and colleagues overcoming barriers to communication including sensory, and emotional difficulties, cultural differences and hostility to or rejection of information.
- Select and administer specialist assessment procedures, interpreting and integrating complex data that require analysis, interpretation and comparison, drawn from several sources.
- Provide teaching and training to other professional groups.
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.
South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust
£47,951 to £56,863 a yearper annum incl. of HCAs (Inner)
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