Community Practitioner

Job overview

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Community Practitioner to join our new Intensive Support Team (IST) working alongside the Community Autism and Learning Disability (Needs Led) Service.

The expectation of the Intensive Support Team will be to:

• support people who present with behaviours that challenge the system,
• work with people with complex mental health presentation who are not able to be supported within community mental health teams due to their needs related to their learning disabilities and /or autism, and
• work with the person in their own residence, reducing/preventing the need for the use of restrictive practices, inpatient services and out-of-area/residential placements.
• Provide support 7 days per week with core hours of 8am to 8pm with flexibility to deliver care outside of these hours, dependant on service user need.

The service will be integrated at a local level across all relevant services and provide psychological and psychiatric person-centred interventions for people accessing either the specialist learning disabilities team, or the enhanced primary care service.

The team is intrinsically linked with the dynamic support register and offers support over the 7-day period and aims to proactively target people with autism and / or  learning disability, who are most at risk of unplanned mental health admissions due to mental illness or behavioural presentation.

Main duties of the job

To provide urgent and planned support , act on early warning signs, deliver evidence-based interventions and support families/carers.

Key role in planning transitions between different settings ,whist advocating for a person’s rights and ensuring they are actively involved in the decision making.

This is a full time, band 6 post. You will be required to have at least 12 months post qualification experience in your registered field, preferably within the field of Autism or Learning Disability.

Working with this client group you will be adaptable and work well under pressure with strong decision-making skills and a positive attitude and approach. The candidate will hold excellent communication skills and demonstrate an understanding of the complexities involved in this specialist area of learning disability/ mental health/autism.

The successful candidate will be joining a skilled integrated multi-disciplinary team working with adults ,families/carers, and other care providers.

The service is supportive to its staff offering learning and training opportunities, clinical supervision, and a supportive, collaborative team culture.

The post holder will need to meet the mobility and geographical requirements of the post which require travel to community premises and across the sites as needed.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

This post is currently based within our South Tyneside team based at Bedewell Unit ,Monkton Hall. However this team is expanding and may need to move to larger premises in the future. This is to strengthen our patient offer and to strengthen our workforce provision.

Geographical area is South Tyneside and there is an expectation that the post holder will need to be able to facilitate community appointments and access other CNTW and STSFT sites.

Please find attached job description for full details.

Advertising date :  9th April 2026

Closing date : 23rd April 2026

We welcome your application.