Early Days in Custody

We have an exciting opportunity for registered mental health nurses to join our Early Days in Custody Team (EDiC) at HMP Swaleside.
**The EDiC team will act with the following principles**:
Holistic - the EDiC team is multi-disciplinary, drawing on expertise from the other teams within healthcare to provide a knowledgeable and skilled service with the ability to draw upon specialist input rapidly when needed.
Curious - the EDiC team will engage with patients with clinical curiosity - drawing on all the information available to them to understand patient needs. The team will engage where possible with patients’ families/carers to fully understand patient’s needs and assist in helping maintain family relationships.
Prioritising Safety - Keep prisoners safe by identifying and addressing immediate risks for that patient including self-harm, risk of death by suicide, and unmanaged substance misuse dependencies.
**Important Sponsorship Information for this post**: We are currently unable to offer a certificate of sponsorship for this post.
**As a EDiC Practitioner you will**:
Ensure that new prisoners are supported during their first 14 days in the prison to access relevant healthcare offers and manage their general health and wellbeing whilst in prison.
Identify the wider needs of patients, through the completion of a comprehensive assessment and working in partnership with them to co-produce a written care plan that addresses their health and social care needs.
The role will include covering some work for the mental health in-reach team. For example:
Care planning
Caseload reviews
Administer antipsychotic depot medication.
Collect and synthesize all relevant clinical history to ensure safety, continuity of care and mínimal re-assessments for the patient and ensuring that the records held for patients are up to date and accurate.
Ensure ongoing care for every person requiring it, with clear pathway management in place that is understood by the patient and their families /significant others.
Information is shared where appropriate and consent has been given to ensure that care plans and risks for patients are widely understood by all staff supporting them, including HMPPS staff where appropriate. This will be done with full patient consent.
Oxleas offers a wide range of NHS healthcare services to people in community and secure environment settings. Our services include community health care such as district nursing and speech and language therapy, care for people with learning disabilities and mental health care such as psychiatry, nursing and therapies. Our multidisciplinary teams look after people of all ages and we work in close partnership with other parts of the NHS, local councils and the voluntary sector and through our new provider collaboratives. Our 4,300 members of staff work in many different settings including hospitals, clinics, prisons, secure hospitals, children’s centres, schools and people’s homes.
We have over 125 sites in a variety of locations in the South of England. In London we operate within the Boroughs of Bexley, Bromley Greenwich and into Kent. We manage hospital sites including Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup and Memorial Hospital, Woolwich, as well as the Bracton Centre, our medium secure unit for people with mental health needs. We are the largest NHS provider of prison health services providing healthcare to prisons within Devon, Dorset, Bristol, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, Kent and South London. We are proud of the care we provide and our people.
Our purpose is to improve lives by providing the best possible care to our patients and their families. This is strengthened by our new values:

- We’re Kind
- We’re Fair
- We Listen
- We Care

The post holder will be responsible to take part in reception screening for new prisoners on the day of first entry into prison. This will identify immediate health, risks, and safety needs.
To be able to develop initial mental health crisis plans for patients who are presenting as particularly at risk of a mental health crisis.
The post holder will be responsible for carrying out comprehensive health and social care assessment (secondary screening) within seven days for all prisoners who are willing to undertake this assessment.
For people that decline this assessment the team will ensure a care plan is in place for any known risks and vulnerabilities and will proactively work with the person to undertake a secondary screen at a later stage.
The post holder will lead on identifying patients whose needs, risks or circumstances have changed following a return from court or hospital outside of the reception process.
The development of a care plan that is individualised, responding clearly to each identified health need with patient input and coproduction where feasible and that ensures the wellbeing and safety of that patient for their first 14 days in custody.
The ability to collate healthcare information from families, community providers or prior