Complex Emotional Needs Pathway Lived Experience Lead

Job overview

The Lived Experience Lead for the Complex Emotional Needs (CEN) Pathway will work across all of our community mental health service sites in collaboration with the Complex Emotional Needs (CEN) Pathway Operational Lead to ensure the systematic provision, strategic planning and design and support for the delivery of high quality services for people receiving support with Complex Emotional Needs across CNWL. The role of the CEN Pathway Lived Experience Lead will be to support the lived experience practitioner workforce within the context of professional supervision and broader staff groups via training, consultation and other activities associated with the design of the services and pathways as appropriate.

In addition, the postholder will have a leading role in the operationalising of the Peer & Lived Experience Workforce strategy, contribute as a stakeholder to both Recovery & Wellbeing College delivery, support occasional workforce-wide training for and on behalf of the peer & lived experience workforce (as appropriate), and sit within the Lived Experience Leadership Team.

Main duties of the job

• Work autonomously within professional guidelines for lived experience workers and exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of lived experience practice within the complex emotional needs pathways within each borough in CNWL.
• Take responsibility for ensuring that systems are in place in the Complex Emotional Needs pathway for the provision of appropriate interventions for complex emotional needs across the trust.
• Take overall responsibility alongside the Complex Emotional Needs Trustwide team for implementing clear systems for effective training, supervision for both group and individual work undertaken by lived experience practitioners within the Complex Emotional Needs pathway.
• Ensure that governance structures for the Complex Emotional Needs pathway are operational in accordance with the trust’s clinical governance structures in accordance with local and Trust policy.
• Ensure the application of clinical governance arrangements in accordance with the Trust’s clinical governance structures, including systems for monitoring performance, contract activity, service quality, and user and carer satisfaction.
• To take responsibility for the recruitment of appropriate professional staff within the pathway.
• To initiate and implement service developments and projects within the service.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• Key responsibilities
• To coordinate the provision of appropriate interventions for people described as having complex emotional needs, ensuring a high quality, responsive and accessible services for clients, their carers and families, including participation in senior management meetings and advising on all aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.
• To support Borough Directors and Clinical Directors in setting the strategic direction of the service within their area, taking account of local and national priorities, and to ensure corporate objectives are addressed within local service business plans.
• To support service managers and clinical leads in ensuring there are robust and effective professional supervision arrangements within the Complex Emotional Needs Pathway for all lived experience staff, in accordance with local and Trust policy.
• Ensure the application of clinical governance arrangements in accordance with the Trust’s clinical governance structures, including systems for monitoring performance, contract activity, service quality, and user and carer satisfaction.
• To take responsibility for the recruitment of appropriate professional staff within the service.
• To initiate and implement service developments and projects within the service.
• Service Delivery responsibilities
• To actively support the Pathway to formulate plans for the treatment and/or management of their client’s mental health challenges based on appropriate concepts and evidence. This should include work across the full range of care settings, including community and inpatient contexts.

2.2. Actively support the Pathway in implementing psychological interventions for individuals, their families or carers.

• To actively support Pathway staff under their supervision to make highly skilled evaluations and decisions about treatment options, always endeavouring to involve the individual client and the group as much as possible in these decisions.
• To provide lived experience expertise and specialist advice, guidance and consultation to multidisciplinary teams and other professionals contributing directly to clients’ formulation and treatment planning.
• To ensure that all members of the clinical teams have access to a psychologically based framework for the understanding and care of clients supported within the Complex Emotional Needs Pathway through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of knowledge, research and theory.
• To develop and advise on accessible sources of information for our local communities and seek to work in authentic coproduction with them around the ongoing improvement journey.
• Administrative responsibilities
• To ensure effective communications with local communities and external stakeholders regarding pathway developments and the ongoing improvements that may emerge across the Complex Emotional Needs pathway.
• To compile and present high standard board reports for the Community Transformation Board as required.
• To work effectively with the Advanced Lived Experience Complex Emotional Needs Training & Development Lead to ensure a robust training offering is cascaded throughout the trust and that the training offer related to Complex Emotional Needs provides a variety of training products for varied audiences.
• Training, Teaching, Research and Supervision
• To assist in the development of teaching methods for lived experience staff and broader staff groups, both related to the complex emotional needs agenda as well as ‘adjacent’ areas, such as trauma informed care and coproduction, and to a variety of care contexts that may meet the client group with complex emotional needs, including external agencies where necessary.
• To provide high-level, expert clinical and professional core and specialist supervision of lived experience practitioner colleagues within the Complex Emotional Needs Pathway and to other teams in the Trust (where agreed locally).
• To continue to develop expertise in the area of professional pre- and post-graduate training and supervision.
• To take a lead role as a senior postholder in planning and implementing systems for the evaluation, monitoring and development of the pathway, through the deployment of skills in research, service evaluation and audit, and ensuring incorporation of psychological frameworks for understanding and provision of high quality care.
• To participate and take a co-ordinating role in the on-going research of the Pathway and in audit projects where necessary, and to collate data as necessary.
• To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence-based practice in individual and group work with other team members.
• To carry out duties in relation to local, regional and national initiatives in developing services in the specialist area as opportunities arise.