Community Mental Health Practitioner

Job overview

The Crisis Resolution and Home Treatment Teams are an integral part of Urgent Care Services providing triage and assessment providing home treatment, gate keeping of hospital beds and providing telephone support to those individuals that are suffering with psychological, emotional and mental health distress. We are an open access service working with the those aged 11 to end of life whom are suffering with a functional illness.

We are now seeking highly motivated and committed band 5 nurses to join us in providing this service and complement our current team of professionals, assisting with the day to day running of the service and ensuring you are professionally accountable and responsible for service users' care. As the ideal candidate for this post you would be an RMN qualified nurse looking for a new challenge and seeking an opportunity to make a real difference to people's lives. We're looking for candidates with excellent communication skills and a passion for helping those experiencing a mental health crisis. You will have the ability to build relationships with key partner agencies and help us to integrate more effectively with other services, as well as thriving on working in a high pressure situation.

We welcome applications from newly qualified individuals.

Job description

• To be a member of a multidisciplinary MHARS team that will provide a 24 hour, 7 days a week service.
• To participate in the provision of a comprehensive assessment, planning, short term intervention, support and education service to clients referred to the service with a range of psychiatric illnesses and mental health crises.
• To have face-to-face contact and the provision of telephone advice ensuring that the needs of the service users are met in the most sensitive and appropriate way.
• To maintain responsibility for a shared caseload of up to 20 to 30 service users.
• The post holder will receive regular supervision from Band 6 Clinicians and/or the Team Manager.

The team operate a mixed economy shift system allowing staff to choose either a standard shift working pattern (7.5 hour shifts) or long shift working pattern (12 hour shifts). This is negotiated with the team manager with those choosing to work long shifts having to pick up a regular short shift or long shift to make up contracted hours. Nights undertaken are 9.5 hours.

The qualification, training & experience requirements for the role are underlined in the Job Description/Person Specification.

Job responsibilities

The post holder will be a member of the Crisis Resolution and Home Treatment Team working with people in Gloucestershire who are thought to be experiencing a period of mental health crisis or psychological distress. The service will provide an acute, mobile, 24 hour, 7 days a week community service as an alternative to hospitalisation.

• To contribute to the rapid assessment and implementation of crisis resolution or evidence based home treatment for service users who are experiencing an acute mental health crisis.
• To optimise the service users ability to remain in the community and/or be cared for in the least restrictive environment in line with the principles of recovering and social inclusion and the 10 essential capabilities.
• To facilitate early discharge from hospital and respond to agencies requiring assessment of clients who are being considered for immediate psychiatric hospitalisation

We provide a Multi-professional preceptorship programme that is aligned to the National Preceptorship Framework for Nursing and have been awarded the Interim quality mark from NHS England. Our programme is provided to all Newly Qualified; Nurses, Nursing Associates, Internationally Educated Practitioners, Allied Health Professionals and Return to Practice Practitioners. In addition to the programme we also offer all preceptees the opportunity of enrolling and completing the level 7 (Masters) 15 credit validated module Preceptorship for Healthcare (AP7026).

Newly qualified Social Workers are offered the Assessed and Supported Year in Employment programme (ASYE) which is similar to a preceptorship programme.

The Trust is required to work in line with the Governments UK Visa and Immigration Rules and Regulations. For more information about sponsorship for certain roles, please visit - https://www.gov.uk/browse/visas-immigration/work-visas

About the organisation

We have a skilled and dedicated workforce of over 5000 colleagues working in a diverse range of services over 55 sites and within people's homes. We strive to enable a welcoming workplace culture that builds and celebrates civility, inclusivity and diversity, while providing a sense of belonging and trust.

Annual staff surveys, regular Pulse surveys and other engagement opportunities provide our people with lots of opportunity to tell us about their experiences of working with us. In the latest staff survey, 61% of colleagues gave us their views. It was great to hear that:

• 72% of colleagues would recommend the Trust as a place to work, ranking us 1st for Provider Trusts in the South West region on this question.
• 76% would recommend the standard of care provided in our services if a friend or relative needed treatment, also ranking us 1st in the South West region.
• 81% said that care of patients and service users is the Trust's priority, compared with an average in comparable NHS Trusts in England of 64%.

This high-level overview shows we are in a healthy position, with higher scores than average for comparable organisations, alongside a great response rate, indicating good staff engagement. However, we also know we have plenty of room for improvement in many areas. To that end, we continue to prioritise and invest in our commitment to genuinely becoming a Great Place to Work with consistent top-quartile performance in the annual staff survey and Pulse surveys.

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential

• NMC or Social Worker or Occupational Therapist or awaiting results from University
• Registered with the HCPC or awaiting results from University

LENGTH AND / OR NATURE OF EXPERIENCE

Desirable

• Working knowledge of recovery approach and social inclusion.
• Experience in the provision of Crisis Resolution and Home Treatment
• Experience of collaboration working with other agencies including the voluntary sector.

PROFESSIONAL / MANAGERIAL / SPECIALIST KNOWLEDGE

Essential

• Knowledge of current Mental Health Act legislation and Mental Capacity Act.
• Demonstrable skills in risk assessment and management.
• Knowledge of the various approaches to mental health assessment.
• Knowledge of evidence based intervention with clients in an acute phase of mental illness.
• An understanding of national policy in relation to mental health
• Knowledge of child care/protection issues.
• Demonstrated commitment to continuing professional development.

Desirable

• Ability to work on social factors affecting mental distress eg accommodation, substance misuse, domestic violence, welfare rights.
• Knowledge of various approaches in the care and treatment of clients with dual disorder (drug and/or alcohol and mental illness).

Supporting documents

• JDPS.pdf (PDF, 473 KB)