Assistant Practitioner

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.

**Job overview**:
This is an exciting opportunity to join our Community Perinatal Mental Health Service. Our county-wide Norfolk & Suffolk Perinatal Community Mental Health service are recruiting for a **Assistant Practitioner** for our **Suffolk Team**. This is an opportunity to work within a specialist multi-disciplinary setting, offering a range of MDT clinical specialisms. We are looking for someone with excellent clinical skills and a passion for perinatal/mental health. It is an exciting time to be working in the perinatal world as the services are rapidly expanding.

You will be part of a multidisciplinary team consisting of Consultant Psychiatrists, Consultant Clinical Psychologist, a Therapies team, Registered Nurses, Social Workers, Assistant Practitioners, Peer Support Workers, Nursery Nurses, Occupational Therapists, Community Team Managers, a Matron and a Service Manager specialising in perinatal mental health.

We are looking for an experienced **B4 Assistant Practitioner** with relevant mental health and community experience to join our Perinatal Community Mental Health Team. This vacancy is based in the county of Suffolk. Within our specialist service you can look forward to a supportive and collaborative team, with friendly, visible and accessible senior staff and medics. We offer specialist perinatal training, line management, caseload and clinical supervision monthly.

**Main duties of the job**:
The Perinatal Community Mental Health Team provides prevention, detection and management of mental health problems that complicate pregnancy and the postpartum year.

You will be responsible for:

- Co-working alongside a lead professional and holding a caseload of women with moderate to severe mental health needs within the perinatal period.
- Undertaking face to face home visits to monitor ongoing mental health needs, risks, medication management, with consideration for social and physical health factors that may impact upon current presentation, with the oversight of the lead professional and consultant psychiatrist.
- Formulating an appropriate plan of care/ signposting to other services.
- Feeding back concerns to the wider MDT.
- Thinking about the parent infant relationship and liaising with wider MDT accordingly.
- Escalating concerns about safeguarding to ECFS /Children’s Services.
- Ensuring all service users have a co-produced care plan.

**Working for our organisation**:
The team offers therapeutic interventions, nursery nurse interventions, medication reviews, Consultant appointments and advocacy through Peer Support.

We are a cohesive, friendly, and kind team and will support you every step of the way.

This is an opportunity to work within a specialist multi-disciplinary setting, which offers a wide range of MDT clinical assessments and treatments, specific specialist perinatal therapeutic individual and group interventions. We promote a strong service user led participation culture as well as supporting partners and families.

We are looking for passionate and high-spirited individual who can be a part of our amazing team to improve services for our service users. We want people to be proactive, creative and innovative to advocate for our service users and develop our service further.

**Why Norfolk and Suffolk?**The people here are warm and welcoming, you’ll never be far from the beautiful coastline or Broads National Park. We’re an hour and a half away from London and have an international airport in Norwich too. Our villages, towns and cities are packed full of history, independent cafes, shops and theatres. We have excellent shopping, eating out, top ranking schooling and affordable house prices too.

**Detailed job description and main responsibilities**:
As this is a community post, it is expected most of our work is completed face to face in service user’s homes or in the community, so a valid UK full driving licence is essential. Access to your own vehicle is preferred, though pool cars can be booked through the Trust’s hire car system.

**If you’re enthusiastic, person centred and have the skills needed to work in a community setting, we would love to hear from you.**

We offer a comprehensive induction programme that includes a review of the Perinatal research and literature, specific training, shadowing with colleagues and other initiatives. We believe that staff, who feel valued by their employers and are truly engaged, can provide better outcomes for our service users.

Here at NSFT we pride ourselves on being a welcoming, talented, friendly and supportive team who like nothing better than sharing experiences and learning from each other. In addition to ongoing training and development opportunities, we are committed to providing an environment in which you can thrive.

**Why