Assistant Practitioner Dist

Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust provides child and adult mental health services, learning disability, wellbeing, older people's and eating disorder services across Norfolk and Suffolk.

At any one time, around 23,000 people in Norfolk and Suffolk are receiving care and attention from the Trust. We believe in whole life care - seeing people in the context of their whole lives, understanding the importance of good physical health, friends, family, spirituality, culture, home, work, education and a sense of purpose and achievement to experience good mental health.

Nearly 3,200 full and part-time practitioners care for our service users in hospitals, in the community and in their own homes, whilst an additional 900+ staff provide non-clinical support, including cleaning, delivering supplies, ward administration, information technology, human resources and financial services.

We are committed to delivering quality driven mental health services. Every individual makes a valuable contribution. We are proud of our staff who have been commended for the care they provide. Do you value working positively, respectfully and together? If so, we’d love you to join us

**JOB DESCRIPTION/PERSON SPECIFICATION

YOUR APPLICATION

This potential change to government policy means that the Trust has paused** **activity relating to this and will not be asking you to provide evidence of** **a vaccination at this time. If you are successfully appointed into a post we will keep you updated with how any changes in law will affect you.

**Job overview**:
Our Dementia Intensive Support Team based at Carlton Court is looking to recruit a full time Band 4 Assistant Practitioner/Community Support Worker. This would be working three long days (0800hrs - 2100hrs) within a seven day working week.

You must be innovative, have good communication skills, a good sense of humour, be approachable and committed to providing a quality service to our service users and their carers/family.

We are looking for someone who wants to grow and develop their knowledge and skills by working closely with colleagues, sharing experience and knowledge, being reflective practitioner to continually learn from the team and each other.

You will be part of a multi-disciplinary team working with other community based services, supporting older people experiencing an acute mental health need with later life complexities and therefore preventing admission to hospital.

This position also offers working closely with other agencies and promoting collaborative working within this area of healthcare.

As a valued member of the team have an opportunity to shadow in other areas of older peoples services, as part of the induction process.

**Main duties of the job**:
We are looking for someone who:

- enjoys working with older people
- has experience of nursing people with mental health needs, both dementia and functional conditions
- are committed to delivering high quality of care
- has a qualification in health or be willing to complete the foundation degree
- can contribute to the assessment, care planning and review process
- has good communication and record keeping of work and observations of our service users
- willing to work as part of a team and on an individual basis
- due to working with a vulnerable service user group, it is preferred that you have had all your vaccinations to enable full care in this role

**Working for our organisation**:
Here at NSFT we pride ourselves on being a welcoming, talented, friendly and supportive team who like nothing better than sharing their experiences and learning from each other.

**Benefits**

Benefits included with this role are:

- NHS pension
- a comprehensive in house & external training programmes
- career progression
- starting annual leave of 27 days per annum increasing to 33 days pa based on length of service (plus paid bank holidays)
- staff physio service
- NHS discounts and many more
- Relocation packages.

**Detailed job description and main responsibilities**:

- health assessments
- physical observations and assessment
- care planning, risk and safety planning
- completing observations for physical health and behavioural work
- attending a handover morning and late evening to discuss ongoing cases
- attending multi-disciplinary meetings, professional meetings
- becoming a health champion
- access to a pool car to enable visits in the home
- carrying out specialised older peoples assessments
- ongoing training mandatory and specialised training for older people
- learning and understanding regarding medication
- delivering high quality care at all times
- advocating and working closely with carer/family member
- responding to intensive work either in a person's own home and/or care home-
**Person specification**:
**Qualifications**:
**Essential criteria**:

- Care certificate or relevant equivalent.
- Foundation Degree in Health and Social Care/mental health or apprenticeship in H&SC/mental health