Associate Practitioner

The role of the Associate Practitioner encompasses two roles - supporting the care coordinator in planning and delivering a care plan (80% of job plan) and secondly the delivery of psychological interventions under the supervision of a qualified psychological practitioner (20% of job plan).

The post involves direct work with individuals and their families experiencing a first episode of psychosis. The role is a diverse one, including assessment and monitoring, using psychologically informed interventions in psychosis, undertaking social care responsibilities (including social care planning and carers assessments), and perhaps most importantly offering both emotional and practical support to individual’s in community and health care settings as we support them to recover and move forward with their lives.

The posts will be supervised by the Band 6 Care Co-ordinator, who will oversee the delivery of care plans for service users and their families. There will be additional supervision from a Clinical Psychologist to oversee any low level psychologically-informed work.

The post would suit a dynamic individual with a Psychology degree and experience of working with individuals with psychosis. There is ample opportunity for development, with the PATH service providing bespoke training programmes and having access annually to Family Intervention training for successful applicants. The community nature of the post means that having a driving license is essential. The ability to work flexibly as the needs of the service demand will be crucial.

“Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (HPFT) is an outstanding organisation with ambitions to match. We are one of just five mental health trusts to achieve an overall rating of ‘Outstanding’ from the Care Quality Commission, and our aim is to be the leading provider of mental health and specialist learning disability services in the country.

Our family of over 3500 members of staff provide health and social care for over 400,000 people with mental ill health, physical ill health and learning disabilities across Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Norfolk, delivering these services within the community and several inpatient settings. We also deliver a range of nationally commissioned specialist services including Tier 4 services for children and young people, perinatal services, plus medium and low secure learning disabilities services.

The care we provide makes a fantastic difference to the lives of our service users, their families and carers - everything is underpinned by choice, independence and equality, with our Trust values embedded throughout:
**Our Trust values are**:
Welcoming. Kind. Positive. Respectful. Professional.

These values are at the core of who we are, everything we do, and how we do it

Would you like to be part of the HPFT family? Would you like work with us to ensure our service users live the fullest lives possible they can? Would you like to be supported in your career to be the best that you can be?

Then please read on ”

**Responsibilities**:
1. Clinical Duties
- To be responsible for the assessment of health and social care needs, and risk

assessment of service users presenting with a wide variety of clinical conditions
- including first episode psychosis. Following this the post holder will be responsible for
the development, implementation and evaluation of programmes of care, with direct
supervision. The post holder will also where appropriate and in keeping with the
social care eligibility criteria enable the client or carer to access a personal budget to
meet their needs.
- Provide a range of clinical interventions and treatments appropriate to the individuals’

needs.
- Participate fully in providing quality care in line with local and national guidelines.
- To respond to any crisis that a patient may advise of, with the aim of promoting

appropriate independent living in the community.
- Act as a role model in providing a service for people with mental health problems.
- To ensure that commissioned services allow choice to service users and carers, and

focus on people living in the community with appropriate support and access to
universal services.
- To liaise and negotiate with other agencies e.g. Adult Care Services, Children

Schools and Families, Benefit Agency, Housing Authorities, CGL, voluntary sector
etc., for joint planning with, or on behalf of, service users.
- To participate in regular supervision.
- To contribute to multi-disciplinary working.
- To contribute to the duty rota (initially with support).
- Will identify the individual care needs of allocated service users, plan, implement and

evaluate all care programmes in conjunction with the service’s mental health team.
- Will maintain close liaison with all department\staff involved in a service user’s care

and report on progress and effectiveness to the MDT.
- To assist in the development of a psychologically based framework o