Senior Practitioner

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Thank you for your interest in the North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT). This is an exciting time to join us and be part of our journey to improve mental health care across North London and deliver excellent services to our local people. We will achieve this through the North London Way, as we:

• Collaborate at every level by living our values to create the right conditions for us all to work together.
• Develop our new Trust culture, to help make our new Trust a great place to work and to receive great care.
• Empower our teams to lead the planned improvements in our services, by skilling them and giving them the tools to make the changes.
• Focus on delivering excellence at every level to improve our performance and ensure consistently high-quality care across all our services.
• Ensure that research, quality improvement, and technology lead the way and are embedded in our services.
• Take a trauma informed approach to everything we do

We proactively welcome diversity in our workforce and pride ourselves on being an inclusive employer. We aim to recruit from our local communities and provide opportunities to all including apprenticeships, veterans, care leavers and more.

The North London Way to deliver: Better Mental Health, Better Lives, Better Communities.

Our trust website is: https://www.northlondonmentalhealth.nhs.uk/

Job overview

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a forward thinking and motivated senior mental health practitioner to work within the police and court liaison and diversion service across north and central London sites which are part of the North London Foundation Trust. The post holder will remain flexible working across the north and central London sites which include police custody suites, Magistrate's and Crown Court's and offer a clinical supervisory oversight function for a third sector community outreach partnership. Working alongside the Marine policing unit and Mental Health Treatment Requirement (MHTR) court orders are also part of the overall role.

The service currently runs 7 days per week which includes bank holidays and weekends covering across the hours of 7am - 10pm. The service provides provision at the following sites and practitioners are expected to work across all sites.

Police Custody Suites: Wood Green, Colindale, Islington, BTP Islington, Holborn

Highbury Magistrates Court and Wood Green Crown Court

Marine Policing Unit

Main duties of the job

The service is a coordinated and integrated approach by secondary care mental health services to identify, triage and engage those in police custody and courts that present with either existing or acute health or social vulnerabilities, and to provide earlier intervention within the non-custodial pathway. This service is for people of all age and vulnerabilities and offers a comprehensive pathway service for those entering and exiting the criminal justice system.

A team of autonomous mental health liaison workers are based within police custody suites and courts across Camden, Islington, Barnet, Enfield and Haringey feeding into Wood Green Crown Court and Highbury Corner Magistrates Court. There is also a community link service across the aforementioned areas where staff are expected to provide a supervisory service. There is an expectation for staff to work across all services within the contract specification with support and supervision provided by the Clinical and Operational Leads.

The role is to screen individuals identified as having mental health ilness, and any other vulnerabilities, provide on-going assessment (including awareness and understanding of other factors including physical health, use of drugs and alcohol, learning difficulties and speech, language and communication issues), immediate case management and to formalize timely and sensitive sharing of information between police, court and mental health services.

Working for our organisation

North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT) is committed to improving mental health care across North London to deliver excellent services to our local people.

Our Five-Year Strategy:

1. We will provide consistently high-quality care closer to home.

1. With our partners in North London and each borough we will ensure equity of outcome for all

1. We will offer great places to work, providing staff with supportive environment to deliver outstanding care.

Why NLFT?

• We develop and retain our staff through leadership behaviours and managers programme and many more opportunities.

• We promote flexible working and support staff with a range of health and wellbeing initiatives.

• NHS Discounts, generous annual leave and NHS pension scheme

• Excellent internal staff network

In order to meet the needs of the Trust you may be required from time to time to work at different locations to your normal place of work. This may mean that you are required to work at any location that fall under Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey or Islington. The Trust reserves the right to require staff to work at such other places or locations as it considers reasonable and necessary on a temporary or permanent basis.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please see the attached Job Description and Person specification for more information on the role requirements and duties.

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria

• Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), Social Work England, Occupational Therapy
• Education and qualifications: Master's degree or equivalent demonstrable experience in relevant area
• Advanced professional skills based post-basic training / development and qualifications

Desirable criteria

• Approved Mental Health Professional

experience and knowledge

Essential criteria

• Advanced professional skills based post-basic training / development and qualifications
• Significant experience and knowledge of working with people with mental health problems.
• Experience in acute adult, multi-disciplinary community mental health services.
• Significant experience of assessing risk and developing risk management plans
• Significant experience of undertaking autonomous assessments.
• Experience of care co-ordination, including health and social care assessment, risk assessment and carer planning.
• A good understanding of recovery principles, the care programme approach (including health and social care assessments) and the role of secondary mental health services in the delivery of care.

Desirable criteria

• Experience of giving written and oral evidence in a court or tribunal setting
• Good knowledge of resources and working practices across Health and Social Care, including substance misuse, learning disability, children's services and housing.
• Experience of working within a Forensic/Criminal Justice environment.
• Ability to be innovative in practice.

SKILLS AND ABILITIES

Essential criteria

• Compassionate - Exceptional interpersonal skills with the ability to communicate effectively with patients, carers and relatives about complex and sensitive issues remaining sensitive and empathetic
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, including presentation of cases Ability to work under pressure and on own initiative
• Ability to treat Service Users with respect and dignity, being culturally sensitive as appropriate, and consider the needs of the whole person
• Able to negotiate and form collaborative partnerships with other agencies
• High standards in written and verbal skills with ability to compile and present written and oral reports
• Basic computer literacy and commitment to develop further
• Ability to manage highly pressured workload
• Ability to represent the Trust within the Criminal Justice System

Desirable criteria

• Self-reliant and resilient able to respond positively to challenging situations
• Willing to embrace organisational change
• Experienced and confident in positively managing risk

References will be required to cover your last 3 years of employment/training. One has to be from your current or most recent employer and the others from your previous employer. The references should be from persons with management responsibility or HR.

If you have been unemployed for a period of four years or more, please give the details of your last employer and one character referee of your choice (not members of your family). If more applicable, references will be requested from your teacher or head of faculty. Please ensure you provide full contact details.

Vacancies that are advertised as Fixed Term Contracts will also be available as secondment opportunities for substantive internal staff.

Please be aware that your documents eg. Passport/NI Card, will be electronically scanned using Home Office accredited Verification System.

Due to the high number of applications that are received for some posts, we will close vacancies before the stated closing date once the first 50 applications are received. Therefore, please apply as soon as possible.

All non-medical posts with the Trust are subject to a probationary period of six months, during which time you will be required to demonstrate to the Trust's satisfaction, your suitability for the position in which you will be employed.

Should you not hear from us within three working weeks of the closing date for this post, then regretfully in this instance, you have not been shortlisted.

By applying for this role, you accept in the event you are successful that your personal data may be transferred from the Trust to another NHS organisation where your employment transfers within the NHS. This is in accordance with the streamlining programme which is aimed at improving efficiencies within the NHS both to make costs savings for NHS organisations but also to save you time when your employment transfers.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

Applicant requirements

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Documents to download

• Job Description (PDF, 520.6KB)
• Functional Requirements PDF (PDF, 258.0KB)
• A comprehensive guide for candidates (PDF, 875.7KB)