SCPHN Health Visitor

Job overview

Full and Part time.

Are you a passionate registered nurse or midwife looking for opportunity to continue to develop professionally? Do you also want to improve health outcomes and provide interventions for children, young people and families within a public health approach? Then Health Visiting may be the ideal career for you.

We have an exciting opportunity within Bolton's 0-19/ 25 Children’s Integrated and Well-being service, Public Health Nursing Service for a Specialist Community Public Health Nurses (SCPHN) within Health Visiting

The primary aim of specialist practice is to improve health outcomes and reduce health inequalities for children, young people and their families living in Bolton.

As a SCPHN, you will gain invaluable evidenced based experience supporting young people, families and communities, including early intervention and safeguarding.

Main duties of the job

We are looking for a colleague with effective communication skills to engage and empower children, young people and families. This will include collaborating with families and relevant professionals whilst being professional and reflecting the NMC Code of Conduct.

You will also be a reliable team player who utilises problem solving approaches as these are aligned to community working and public health nursing.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

• To demonstrate the trust values at all times; Vision, Openness, Integrity, Compassion and Excellence.
• To work as part of a 0-19/25 integrated neighbourhood team, taking responsibility for the delivery of commissioned aspects of the healthy child programme to children, young people and families.
• Lead on the delegation and supervision of work to public health nurses, public health practitioners and public health support workers in line with their expertise and competence, ensuring that key objectives and outcomes are achieved relating to commissioned services and delivered in line with the healthy child programme guidance document.
• Undertake a comprehensive and holistic health needs assessment to a caseload of children, young people and families at universal, universal plus and universal partnership plus level, using evidence-based assessments and interventions to plan and evaluate care following clinical pathways.
• Provide Early Help using a strengths based approach to plan care with a child, young person and/or family when a multi-agency response is needed. To work in partnership with other key stakeholders to safeguard children and young people.
• Take and act upon referrals from other agencies and services, as appropriate.
• Promote positive healthy lifestyles and emotional health and wellbeing for individuals, children, young people, families, groups and communities, promoting self-care and relevant access to health care services with the aim of reducing Accident & Emergency attendances and reducing avoidable admissions to hospital.
• To provide neighbourhood health information to inform the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment.
• Provide training where necessary to children, young people, parents and other professionals.
• To deliver on the emotional health and wellbeing pathway 0-19(25), which includes perinatal mental health, attachment and bonding.
• Practice within baby friendly standards to ensure that all parents have the information required to make informed feeding choices and are aware of the specialist support services available to manage complex feeding difficulties and to promote the continuation of breastfeeding.
• To maintain and develop professional practice; including non-medical prescribing and to act as an excellent role model to other team members and students.
• Work under the direction of the neighbourhood team leader to complete data collection, clinical and departmental audits.
• To have in depth knowledge and application of NMC guidance: The Code, NMC standards of proficiency: SCPHN’s, NMC standards for prescribing programmes, NMC standards for student supervision and assessment.
• Maintain accurate and contemporaneous record keeping in line with NMC standards and trust guidance.
• The requirement to travel to any of the neighbourhood teams to support service delivery.
• Follow safe manual handling practices when transporting equipment to other locations or when being used in service user homes.

Communication and Relationship Skills

• Establish and maintain productive working relationships within the neighbourhood team. Facilitate communication with other health professionals, external providers and community and voluntary sector providers.
• Support integrated working by ensuring that team members have a shared understanding of processes and relevant care pathways.
• Maintain sensitivity to the emotional needs of service users when discussing development delay, and the nature, prognosis and implications of health and medical conditions.
• Use specialist skills and knowledge to engage hard to reach children, young people, families, groups and communities.
• Be able to communicate with children, young people and families for whom English is a second language, using service link workers, telephone interpreting or bookable face to face interpreters.
• To lead, support and develop team members, with a view to maximising their effectiveness, and enabling them to fulfil their full potential e.g. line management, coaching, mentorship.
• Support and deputise in the team leader’s absence when appropriate.
• The ability to manage challenging, distressing and emotional circumstances, accessing team support, leadership support and clinical supervision as required.

Analytical and Judgmental Skills

• Identify risks and undertake risk assessments, formulating controls and actions to reduce risk.
• Promote critical thinking and reflective practice within teams, using group clinical supervision to identify learning needs. Liaise with neighbourhood team leader and/or practice educators to identify training needs for all staff within the team.
• Develop and exercise high levels of judgment and decision making during the assessment and delivery of interventions with children/young people and families.
• Demonstrate high levels of concentration, judgement and decision making to prioritise workload when responding to unpredictable work pressures whilst managing deadlines.

Planning and Organisational Skills

• Accountable for the planning, implementation and management of your own caseload, supporting service user demand, prioritising against the service specification.
• Contribute to the organisation and planning of student nurse practice placement experiences.
• Organise and facilitate multi-professional child in need meetings when you are the Lead Professional for the child/young person/family.
• Have a solution focused approach to service delivery, prioritising safeguarding children, the delivery of the vulnerable families pathway and mandated contacts whenever possible.

Patient/Client Care

• Responsible for ensuring the delivery of high-quality care to children, young people and families.
• Promoting strong parent-child attachment and positive parenting, resulting in better social and emotional wellbeing among children and young people.
• Identification of parents, carers, children and young people who are experiencing mental health difficulties, timely management of risk and referrals, for example to  GP’s, Thrive Partnership, Psychological Therapy Services,  CAMHS or A&E as appropriate.
• Growth monitoring to support the early recognition of growth disorders, faltering growth and obesity.
• Health promotion to encourage uptake of childhood Immunisations, to prevent serious and communicable diseases.
• Early Identification of factors that could influence health and wellbeing in families.
• Encourage access to community services and education provision to improve short and long-term outcomes for children who are at risk of social exclusion.