Mental Health Liaison Practitioner

Crawley Mental Health Liaison Practitioner Service (MHLP) currently has an exciting opportunity for two permanent full time post.

Crawley is a lively and friendly team where you will be offered mentorship and supervision from senior nursing colleagues, active management support and the chance to undertake training courses relevant to your professional practice. You will also have access to regular professional supervision.

Hours of work are generally between 9am and 5pm from Monday to Friday.

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.

Our organisation is expanding and we're looking for people with the right values, skills and/or potential to join us. We need people with energy, expertise, enthusiasm to help us provide the very best possible specialist NHS mental health and learning disability care. This involves helping us achieve our strategy to improve the quality of life for the communities we serve through People, Prevention and Partnerships.

**MAIN DUTIES**:
Clinical
1. The post-holder will be both a member of a number of GP led primary care teams and a member of secondary care mental health services.
2. To undertake screening and assessment of patients with mental health problems referred by GPs to determine the most appropriate intervention and offer support and advice using the philosophy of least intervention possible and of a recovery, strength based approach.
3. To support GPs and primary care teams in assessing and managing risk.
4. To facilitate the patient’s journey to secondary services and other statutory services as needed including acting as broker between secondary care services to avoid clients being “bounced” around teams.
5. To be aware of service users with complex needs who are discharged from secondary care to primary care, and to liaise with their GPs to ensure that the discharge is well managed.
6. To support and work alongside GPs in the implementation of patient-centred care packages and treatment for use within primary care.
7. To support GPs with issues relating to medication, and to liaise with psychiatry colleagues about medication advice and diagnostic advice as required.
8. To contribute to the development of assessment skills of other practitioners in primary care to promote more accurate identification of mental health problems.
9. To provide, where required, supervision for students and other mental health trainees.
10. To ensure that clinical practice is evidence-based and consistent with relevant NICE Guidelines, and Trust policies and procedures.
11. To work in a flexible way in providing cover in other GP practices when needed.

Consultation and training
1. To provide advice and consultation to GPs and primary care teams.
2. To provide high quality information to GPs and primary care teams on local resources and services
3. To publish and make available information about the practitioner role to local people
4. To attend supervision from appropriate clinical practitioners in nursing and psychological care, approved by the service manager.
5. To provide formal and informal training in a range of mental health issues identified by GPs for GPs and Primary Care Mental Health Teams and present cases, literature reviews and research findings at clinical and other meetings as appropriate.

Networking and service provision
1. To work closely with other practitioners, local day services, local education establishments, employment agencies and third sector services
2. To maintain close working relationships with secondary care services.
3. To provide information to patients, and their carers, about their care and options available to them.
4. To ensure that the service is equitable and accessible to clients and carers.

Quality and audit
1. To ensure that assessment and interventions are provided to agreed standards.
2. To keep GPs and primary care teams well informed on outcomes of interventions and therapies provided to their patients.
3. In association with GPs, other practitioners and service managers, to involve patient, carers