Hospital Idva

The Hospital IDVA (Independent Domestic Violence Advisor) will be employed by FearFree to develop pathways and processes for the Hospital IDVA primarily in Maternity Services and Emergency Department (ED) at Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust (SFT). This is a fixed term position until April 2025.

The Hospital IDVA will work within a dynamic, fast paced, crisis intervention, advocacy and support service embedded within the hospital to ensure all staff are aware of Domestic Abuse, and equipped to ask the right questions and encourage both patients and staff to engage with the support the Hospital IDVA will bring to this environment.

The post holder will assist health practitioners to respond more effectively to domestic abuse, particularly those with complex and multiple needs, and will bring specialist knowledge and skills in empowering clients to seek the right support and move forward.

The work will include providing specialist knowledge and expertise to other health care practitioners to ensure victims of domestic abuse (and their children) are safeguarded from further harm, to provide a strong partnership approach to service provision.

Priority will be given to medium and high-risk cases that are employees and patients of Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust (SFT) - those who do not live in Wiltshire to be sign-posted to specialist support within their local authority area. To work with all victims of abuse that have health related needs in the Wiltshire area.

Key elements of the role include:

- Providing priority support to both patients and staff at the hospital.
- Delivering Domestic Abuse training to all staff at the hospital equipping them to recognise all forms of Domestic Abuse and ensuring they are confident in starting those conversations.
- Risk assessing and helping to keep service users safe through safety planning.
- Enabling victims to access and engage with statutory and other services.
- Engaging with and supporting the MARAC process, to ensure that the voice of victims is heard.
- Managing a caseload of medium to high-risk victims and working proactively to support them and their families.
- Develop and maintain working relationships with additional services relevant to this field.
- Ensure services and resources are appropriate and tailored to services users needs.

**Key responsibilities**:

- Hold a caseload and provide high-quality telephone and face to face crisis intervention, information, advocacy, support and signposting to both staff and patients at the hospital who have been identified as victims of Domestic Abuse.
- Proactively assess the needs and risks of clients regularly in line with FearFree policies and procedures, having full regard for case management, MARAC and safeguarding adults and children policies and procedures.
- Complete risk and safety plans for all clients, ensuring risk management and safety is at the heart of everything we do in line with company standards.
- Ensure all records comply with compliance and quality standards and information is recorded accurately and in a timely manner
- Engage with all relevant support agencies, acting as the “voice” of both staff and patient victims to seek support to address specific identified barriers.
- Support all caseloads to access external support and sign-post where appropriate to enable caseload to engage with other organisations who can support them on their road to recovery.
- Work proactively to raise awareness of Domestic Abuse and upskill all staff within the hospital to be able to identify potential Domestic Abuse, and seek support from the Hospital IDVA.
- Attend regular safeguarding and domestic abuse meetings within the Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust and health related settings to discuss active cases as required by the manager.
- Proactively assess the needs and safety of any children of the client and ensure that any risks/needs identified are addressed directly with them, having full regard to Safeguarding Children’s policy and complying with the Local Safeguarding Children requirements.
- Advise clients of their rights and options for seeking help and support from other agencies, making referrals, attending appointments with them when required, co-ordinating the provision of multi-agency support where necessary, and proactively advocating to ensure barriers to accessing support and protection are reduced.
- Proactively look for and implement innovative and creative ways of engaging vulnerable and hard to reach victims, particularly those with multiple needs, and sustain the engagement.
- Participate in multi-agency conferences and meetings in respect of children and adults at risk as required, providing reports and undertaking actions as necessary.
- Work in partnership with key agencies, particularly with Health agencies, to ensure effective joint working.
- At all times protect the safety and security of service users, staff, volunteers and buildings, and the confidentiality of records and other i