Children's and Young People Care Assistant

Job overview

• Deliver care, therapeutic support and engagement to children attending the paediatric children’s and young people emergency department or admitted to the children’s ward with challenging behaviour and mental health concerns as directed by the ward nursing team, Trust mental health team or the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) Urgent Care Team.
• Using excellent communication skills engage and gather information from patients and carers to support a multidisciplinary assessment of the patients’ emotional needs
• Contribute to risk assessments and risk planning by identifying the triggers for risky behaviours, the nature of the risky behaviours, any protective measures and report these findings and any other issues of concern to the child’s allocated nurse or mental health team.
• Build therapeutic relationships and ongoing continuous assessment and adjustment of interventions based on the patient’s needs, develop and implement new activities in response to individuals needs and recording and escalating concerns relating to care accurately and promptly.
• On occasions to be redeployed across the hospital to provide support to older adolescents admitted to adult wards and adult patients with mental health issues, delirium or dementia under supervision
• Staff to undertake care certificate completion.

Main duties of the job

• Be key in instigating a ward environment that is pleasant, cheerful and welcoming.
• Provide high quality care, therapeutic support and engagement to children attending the paediatric emergency department or admitted to the children’s ward with challenging behaviour or mental health concerns.
• Work collaboratively with the multidisciplinary team, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) colleagues and the Trust mental health team to ensure high quality care is provided to children and young people attending the hospital with challenging behaviour and mental health concerns.
• Work with the paediatric multi-disciplinary team to implement and promote the ward philosophy.
• To provide support across the wider hospital at the discretion of the Trust mental health team/Senior sister on site.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• Demonstrate caring, compassionate, professional behaviour fostering trust and confidence in the service for people in your care.
• Adhere to the Trust CARES values.
• Always exhibit professional behaviour and attitude.
• Act always in a manner demonstrating respect for privacy, dignity and confidentiality.
• Act within the limits of competence, ensuring actions support care, protection and well-being of others.
• Act flexibly to changeable demands of working in a busy acute hospital to ensure patient needs are being met where additional support is required.