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Job summary

Main area
Offender Healthcare
Grade
Band 6
Contract
Permanent
Hours
Full time - 37.5 hours per week (Monday to Friday 8:30am-5pm)
Job ref
277-6467228-MED
Employer
Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust
Employer type
NHS
Site
HMP Cookham Wood
Town
Rochester
Salary
£37,392 - £44,618 pa inc
Salary period
Yearly
Closing
31/07/2024 23:59

Employer heading

Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust logo

Mental Health Practitioner

Band 6

Job overview

Are you ready to unlock your potential within a challenging, creative and fast paced work environment? Do you want to escape your current job role and work with people to build positive and productive lives, whatever their past? Now is the time to break into offender healthcare and develop your career.

As part of the Kent Prison Healthcare contract awarded to Oxleas NHS trust in 2022, we are able to expand recruitment and are looking for a compassionate, knowledgeable and motivated Mental Health Nurse to join our friendly team at HMP Cookham Wood.

Our healthcare team have a real impact on promoting health and well-being to those in prison and we pride ourselves on using skills and strategies that instil hope for patients future resettlement back into the community. We directly deliver Mental Health, Physical Health, Pharmacy and Clinical Substance Misuse in an integrated healthcare delivery model to provide effective and responsive care to improve wellbeing and support better outcomes in the future.

As part of our mental health team, you will enjoy all the benefits of NHS AfC employment (inc pension) with the opportunity to work within a forward-thinking service, who encourage career and personal development to all staff to increase their clinical and interpersonal skills.

Working pattern:  Monday to Friday 8am-4pm

Main duties of the job

To provide specialist mental healthcare to offenders and to work as part of the Mental Health Team and wider mental health services.
To deliver a range of specialist interventions at primary and secondary care level; to include

•    Referral management, screening assessment, triage, and evidence-based interventions
•    Care planning and risk assessing 
•    One-to-one and group-work facilitation
•    Managing a mixed and challenging caseload including people struggling with severe enduring mental illness, personality difficulties and neurodevelopmental problems.

Working for our organisation

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’re Kind
  • We’re Fair
  • We Listen
  • We Care

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Key Task and Responsibilities:

  • To contribute to alternatives to inpatient admission and assisting with early discharge, through the implementation of high intensity specialist interventions and complex case management arrangements resulting in continuity of care for an offender on ordinary location, reduced length of stay (both in relation to prison inpatient services and external NHS or independent in-patient services).
  • To perform robust assessment, screening, and interventions to offenders with a learning disability
  • Ensure that all waiting time, assessment and interventions are delivered in a timely manner, and positively contribute to the achievement of the service’s performance targets. 
  • Ensure integrated and collaborative working with other specialist services, including continuity of care and through the gate arrangements and liaison
    work closely with community mental health teams (CMHTs) to ensure appropriate sharing of information, continuity of care and the Care Programme Approach (CPA) for all offenders as necessary.
  • To provide comprehensive and timely reports and mental health expertise to multi agency public protection panels (MAPPA), police, probation services, solicitors and court liaison teams as directed. 
  • Provide supervision to junior staff and to receive supervision as directed (line management and clinical).
  • To participate in resource centre services as directed, delivering psychological therapy and specialist activities under the direction of the clinical lead.
  • To work in a psychologically minded way with offenders in achieving their agreed goals and quality health outcomes.
  • Close working relationships with all prison staff, to include participation in sentence planning, resettlement, safer custody, and ACCT processes.
    To develop and take on a specialist lead role as appropriate and provide peer support and training in this area.
  • To contribute towards support, advice, consultation, and training for other prison departments.
  • The post holder will be part of skilled multidisciplinary teams comprising all healthcare staff, including strategic partners, and prison managing a single referral pathway. 
  • The post holder will be required to undertake training to maximise uptake of screening, health promotion and prevention activity, including vaccinations. 
  • The post holder will ensure a named care co-ordinator is allocated for every patient with complex needs who will ensure a proactive, evidence-based approach to clinical interventions, health promotion/prevention activity, and management of acute and long-term conditions using our stepped care approach.
  • The post holder will ensure that a single, integrated, care plan is developed, and the individualised care is regularly reviewed.
  • The post holder will ensure that a comprehensive risk assessments and care plans are regularly reviewed in a needs-led review cycle. 
  • The post holder will ensure a care coordination criteria and MDT meetings for patients with complex needs will be tailored to the needs of the establishment.  
  • The post holder will ensure that they undertake all training in evidence-based CBT approaches, to enhance consistency and quality of care delivery.
  • The post holder will support patients to manage their health at every stage, from oral health to long term conditions.
  • The post holder will ensure that health promotion embedded into every aspect of the service.

 

IMPORTANT PLEASE READ:

All applicants must be willing to undertake National Security Vetting in order to work in a Prison Setting. This will be completed as part of the pre-employment checks through Oxleas and the prison vetting team.  

You will need to provide: 

Proof of right to work documentation 

Proof of ID, needs to include 1 photographic ID

Proof of address documentation 

Non-UK passport holders will need to have correct documentation (right to work in the UK) and a Home office Share code. 

Address History: 

5 years address history will be needed.  

Applicants that are not UK Passport holders who provide less than 5 years UK address history will need to provide a Police Certificate which must be in English from where they resided previously. 

Applicants who are UK Passport holders who have lived abroad for a period of more than six months during the last three years will need to provide a certificate of good conduct or an overseas police check in English from the countries resided in or visited.

In order to assist you in obtaining a Police Certificate, guidance can be sought from:https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/criminal-records-checks-for-overseas-applicants

If the country you have resided in is not listed here, you can obtain the necessary information by contacting the relevant Embassy or High Commission for that Country. Their contact details can be found on the Foreign & Commonwealth Office website (http://www.fco.gov.uk/en).

Person specification

Education/Qualifications

Essential criteria
  • Professional Qualification. (Registered Mental Nurse)
  • Post Graduate Qualification or equivalent experience.

Experience

Essential criteria
  • Appropriate working experience post qualification as a psychiatric nurse
  • Experience in prison or secure settings
  • Experience of multi-professional collaboration including working in partnership with other statutory and voluntary organisations.
  • Experience of setting, monitoring and evaluating standards of care.
Desirable criteria
  • Experience of working within secure & prison settings (desirable but not essential)

Skills/Abilities/Knowledge

Essential criteria
  • Clear understanding of CPA policy
  • Clear understanding of Risk Assessment principles and procedures.
  • Show a clear understanding of how to give and receive highly complex and sensitive material.
  • Sound evidence based clinical knowledge of adult mental health treatments and support.

Effort and Environment

Essential criteria
  • Ability to manage complex & challenging behaviour

Employer certification / accreditation badges

Veteran AwareNo smoking policyAge positiveInvestors in People: GoldDefence Employer Recognition Scheme (ERS) - BronzeImproving working livesArmed Forces Covenant Gold AwardMindful employer.  Being positive about mental health.Disability confident employerStonewall equality policy. Equality and justice for lesbians, gay men, bisexual and trans people.Step into health

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

Apply online now

Further details / informal visits contact

Name
Clare Denny
Job title
Recruitment & Retention Resourcing Officer
Email address
[email protected]
Telephone number
07504877653
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