Community Mental Health Nurse

Job Overview

Are you passionate about supporting individuals with mental health needs? We are looking for a Care Navigator to join our dynamic and diverse community mental health team, to deliver high quality care. The Bentley House Adult Community Mental Health Hub (CMHH) serves the diverse population of Harrow, who have secondary mental health needs. The post holder will have the opportunity to work in collaboration with a full multidisciplinary team including medical staff, nurses and allied health professionals. The CMHH is a trauma-informed service and operate an intervention-focused model. The role is a fixed term contract for one year; an excellent opportunity to develop skills, knowledge and experience in community mental health. This is a full role from Monday - Friday; 9am - 5pm. Bentley House is based in Harrow; a 5 minute walk from Harrow and Wealdstone station.

Main duties of the job

To be an active member of Harrow CMHH multidisciplinary team and provide individually tailored interventions for a defined caseload of adults of working age, and their families/carers, who have severe and enduring mental illness. To work in a therapeutic, client-centred way and use a range of evidence-based interventions to help promote recovery through individual or joint working with other professionals.

Working for our organisation

The team are supportive of staff development and wellbeing. The post holder will have access to training opportunities and regular supervision. The successful applicant may have contact with patients or service users. As an NHS Trust we strongly encourage and support vaccination as this remains the best way to protect yourself, your family, your colleagues and of course patients and service users when working on our healthcare settings.

Detailed Job Description And Main Responsibilities

Key Tasks

• To be accountable for assessment and care planning of a defined caseload of adults of working age.
• To assess health and social care needs (including accommodation, finances, and support in accessing education, training or employment) and negotiate care plans with service users and their carers, remaining objective when working with diagnostic uncertainty.
• To prioritise time and workload, in a flexibly manner to meet community caseload responsibilities, participate in meetings and effectively develop personal skills knowledge and experience through supervision and training.
• To undertake risk assessments, according to Trust policy.
• To ensure delivery of care plans in partnership with multi-disciplinary colleagues and a range of health and social care agencies.
• To participate in delivering group programmes of specific interventions
• To engage with service users and carers assertively and offer care/interventions within the least restrictive setting, in normal community environments.
• To help clients gain fair and equal access to services, through choice and social inclusion and being sensitive to age, culture, ethnicity and gender, sexuality and disability.
• To offer a range of evidence based psycho-social interventions and pro-active risk management approaches to help the service user and their family to reduce and manage symptoms, high risk behaviour and other disabling effects of psychosis and enable, as far as possible, full and sustained recovery.
• To ensure CNWL Child Protection Guidelines and procedures are fully understood by self and others.
• To ensure the safety needs of children are met at all times and take appropriate action when a child is felt to be at risk or in need.
• To monitor treatment, support concordance and ensure prompt action is taken to alleviate unwanted effects.
• To provide access to, and ongoing, psycho-education and health promotion regarding illness, disability and health to service users and families.
• To provide interventions and to work with other disciplines/agencies/teams in the care of service users experiencing co-morbid problems with substance use/misuse.
• To engage the service user and their family in relapse prevention and crisis planning, provide, and coordinate interventions that maximise the service users’ ability to resolve crises, remain at home and avoid the need for hospitalisation.
• To deliver a flexible and responsive service through working practices that are dictated by service user/carer need and contribute to the provision of service continuity including outside normal working hours when necessary.
• If admission to hospital becomes necessary, to provide regular, formal, joint Inpatient review to ensure the service user is transferred/discharged to the lowest stigma/least restrictive environment as soon as clinically possible.
• To maintain standards of professional conduct at all times and observe the legal requirements of the MHA (1983), its Code of Practice, The Children Act (1989) and other relevant legislation and guidance.

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria

• Current Professional Qualification in Mental Health Nursing.
• Registration must be live with professional body.

Desirable criteria

• Training in Psychosocial Interventions or Thorn Family Therapy/Work training
• Other relevant training, eg substance misuse ENB 812/998/SLICE, mentorship Phlebotomy Training
• Training in Care Act 2014

Experience

Essential criteria

• Experience of working in multidisciplinary mental health team with clients with acute/severe and enduring mental health problems

Desirable criteria

• Work with people experiencing mental health crisis
• Audit and Research
• Previous experience in Clozapine Clinic
• Teaching
• Working with people who use substances

Skills

Essential criteria

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, including report writing and presentations / IT skills.
• Ability to assess needs, plan, implement and evaluate a care plan
• Highly skilled administering antipsychotic depot medication and interactions with mental health conditions
• Ability to assess, plan, implement and evaluate a comprehensive care package for the identified client group, using a wide range of resource
• Able to develop a comprehensive programme of intervention and support for the identified client group and their families
• Skills in risk assessment and management
• Can demonstrate understanding of psychosis and its impact on service users and carers.
• Knowledge of current legislation and guidance applicable to this client group
• Can demonstrate understanding of the needs of diverse groups, e.g. residents of inner city; black and minority ethnic groups, and skills in engaging with them

Desirable criteria

• Basic counselling and group work skills
• Skills in leadership: ability to motivate others, use initiative and manage change.
• Dual diagnosis/substance misuse
• Working with POCHi machine and ZTAS