Mental Health Liaison Practitioner

The Bognor Assessment and Treatment Service (ATS) is a community mental health team supporting people living with severe and enduring mental illness. Mental Health Liaison Practitioners (MHLP) are part of Assessment and Treatment Service and work as liaison between the ATS and GP Surgeries. The post holder will work within GP surgeries and will be the liaison and link between primary care and secondary care services.

We are looking for 2 experienced Band 6 Mental Health Practitioner (Nurse, Occupational Therapist, Social Worker or Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner) to work within GP Surgeries to provide 6- 8 sessions of CBT informed or psycho educational intervention to people with mild to moderate mental health problems. The successful applicant will also be responsible for completing initial assessments and liaising with GP's, Increased Assessed to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) services, local agencies and signposting to third sector and Pathfinder services.

To protect the health and safety of our staff/workers, patients, and those attending our sites, we encourage our workforce to get fully vaccinated against COVID.

**Working as an MHLP includes**:

- Working autonomously to a defined caseload of clients diagnosed with mild to moderate mental health problems. This will include offering specific interventions such as psycho-education, CBT informed sessions and short term recovery focused interventions
- You will complete initial assessments and work closely with our referrals coordinators, GP's and other agencies.
- Your interventions will be a pre-defined offer of 6-8 sessions.
- You are welcome to co-facilitate groups if you have an interest in this area.

**What you will receive from us**:

- We are a friendly and supportive team that meets regularly to ensure you feel safe and supported.
- We offer several MDT meetings per week to ensure support is available for complex case discussions.
- You will receive regular managerial supervision and be offered the opportunity to supervise junior staff.
- You will also have access to regular clinical supervision and support from our Community Leads
- We actively encourage people to think about their development and career goals, and will support you to complete further training.

We encourage flexible working. We know that a positive work/ life balance brings about huge health-related benefits, which has a positive impact on the care we provide. Please speak to us about flexible working, for example, home-working, part time hours, flexible start/ finish times or anything else. If it works for you and works for the role, we'll do our best to make it happen.

To work as part of the secondary care mental health service, acting as a link clinician to primary care teams. Clinical work will be carried out within primary care settings.

To work with GPs and primary care teams, specifically colleagues in IAPT (Time to talk), providing support, advice, consultation and shared care for adults, regardless of age and diagnosis, presenting with a functional mental illness, to enable safe management of clients within primary care.

To work in partnership with GPs and other primary care colleagues around individual patients and to work jointly with them to develop care plans for the client.

To assess individuals with complex presentations, prior to referral to secondary care and if required, directing them into the appropriate specialist service within secondary care ensuring they are not passed
between services.

To maintain a close working relationship with local secondary care teams, keeping them informed of developments within primary care.

To build up professional relationships within Primary Care to allow effective development of care pathways within localities.

To work closely with secondary care colleagues, using their expertise where necessary, to ensure an appropriate response, particularly, but not exclusively from medical colleagues.

To ensure and keep updated a comprehensive knowledge of local resources and services available and how to access these and provide this information to practices and specialist teams as requested.

To provide comprehensive and accurate information on the role of the Primary Care Mental Health Liaison Practitioner, local resources and services to GPs, primary care teams, secondary care teams,
service users and third sector agencies.

To work to early intervention principles and provide assessments for service users with more complex presentations identified in consultation with GPs.

To organise, provide and coordinate formal and informal training to GPs and primary care teams on topics relating to mental health as agreed with GPs and PBCs, in order to further enhance the skills of the staff in the diagnosis and management of mental health disorders.