Mental Health Practitoner

The Older People’s Intensive Home Treatment Team is a multidisciplinary team, providing a service seven days a week, 365 days per year to individuals in mental health crisis with the principal aim of providing an effective alternative to inpatient care. This involves intensive clinical work over short periods of time to prevent the need for admission or facilitate safe early discharge.

The team also carries out 72 hour follow–up for individuals discharged from mental health inpatient units.

As a senior clinician, the post holder will play a key role in the gatekeeping of acute inpatient admissions, undertaking complex assessments to determine whether individuals can be safely and effectively treated in their own homes. This requires a high degree of clinical autonomy, advanced risk formulation skills, and the ability to make robust, evidence-based decisions under pressure.

Main duties of the job

The post holder will be expected to promote and develop clinical leadership and clinical practice and be a positive role model to junior members of the team through the practice of evidence based care. The post holder will be expected to support professional development through clinical appraisal and supervision and contribute to the ongoing educational programme for staff, fostering a positive learning environment.

The post holder will be encouraged to foster collaborative cross organisational working.

The postholder may be expected to transfer to another CRHTT temporarily or permanently where there is a clear clinical need to do so.

Oxleas offers a wide range of NHS healthcare services to people in community and secure environment settings. Our services include community health care such as district nursing and speech and language therapy, care for people with learning disabilities and mental health care such as psychiatry, nursing and therapies. Our multidisciplinary teams look after people of all ages and we work in close partnership with other parts of the NHS, local councils and the voluntary sector and through our new provider collaboratives.

Our 4,300 members of staff work in many different settings including hospitals, clinics, prisons, secure hospitals, children’s centres, schools and people’s homes.
We have over 125 sites in a variety of locations in the South of England. In London we operate within the Boroughs of Bexley, Bromley Greenwich and into Kent. We manage hospital sites including Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup and Memorial Hospital, Woolwich, as well as the Bracton Centre, our medium secure unit for people with mental health needs. We are the largest NHS provider of prison health services providing healthcare to prisons within Devon, Dorset, Bristol, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, Kent and South London.

We are proud of the care we provide and our people.

Our purpose is to improve lives by providing the best possible care to our patients and their families. This is strengthened by our new values:

• We Listen
• We Care

Management responsibilities

Support and teach junior staff to develop understanding of mental health signs and symptoms and develop appropriate responses to these in practice.

Recognise and respond appropriately to challenging behaviour in line with Trust policies and training.

Lead and coordinate junior staff and the wider care team in the management of difficult situations and de‑escalation, developing resilience and strategies to manage, including on leading staff and patient ‘de‑briefing’ sessions.

Demonstrate an in-depth of knowledge and understanding of the fundamentals of the Mental Health Act, Mental Capacity Act and Deprivation of Liberty and other legislation…