Senior Clinician SPA/ OOHs Clinician

Job overview

An exciting opportunity has arisen for an experienced clinician looking to work at the front door of urgent mental health services in CNWL.

The SPA/OOHCR Senior Practitioner will play a crucial role in delivering urgent mental health support to people in mental health crisis.

The SPA is CNWL’s 24/7 crisis line and urgent referral service where clinicians work primarily over the telephone to conduct clinical triages and support callers to access crisis support in a timely manner, and to remain in the community.

The service also provides face to face crisis assessments between 8pm and 8am across Brent, Harrow, Hillingdon, K&C and Westminster. Within these hours clinicians will travel to peoples’ homes and conduct assessments in order to provide an alternative to attending A&E.

We believe that the best care is delivered by enthusiastic and skilled healthcare professionals who are passionate about crisis support and understanding of the social stressors that can contribute to people feeling distressed. The service values those with a wealth of experience of mental health conditions and their treatment.

You will also be prepared to work nights and be involved in the clinical supervision of the staff undertaking the OOHs crisis assessment role.

Main duties of the job

The key elements of this post are:

-Overseeing and conducting rapid engagement with service users over the telephone and in-person by conducting face to face assessment in their homes.

-Delivering care and training/supervising others to ensure a high level of triage, assessment and signposting of service users to statutory and non-statutory support services.

-Working closely with our Bed management services, home treatment teams and psychiatric liaison teams and the Mental Health Crisis assessment services as well as having an excellent understanding of CNWL referral pathways in secondary care

-Using excellent clinical assessment and risk formulation skills and being able to confidently communicate to the team and to stakeholders both verbally and in writing.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Main duties and responsibilities: To provide strong and effective clinical leadership to the 24/7 SPA team and the Out of Hours Crisis Response Service between 8pm and 8am.

To provide day to day clinical leadership, management and co-ordination focusing on delivering high quality mental health support services.

To actively work as part of the team as required answering calls and arranging urgent mental health support for patients in crisis.

To undertake assessments in patients’ homes that are referred to the OOHCR Team, to formulate risk, arrange care and support people in crisis. Providing an alternative to assessment in A&E.

To undertake clinical screening of all referrals coming into the service the other Senior Practitioners in post.

To participate in setting standards of care in the team and ensure that those experiencing mental health issues are given fair access to treatment and services.

To ensure a robust training and support programme is in place for both SPA and peer support staff.

To work in conjunction with the Service manager of SPA to ensure that all aims, goals and targets are met, and clinical quality is maintained.

To support the Service Manager in regular reviews of the team and performance and adapting practice or the service in collaboration with other key professionals.

To participate in multi-agency meetings internal and externally to ensure that regular callers and high intensity users of the service have a good quality care plan.

Support the service manager to ensure that the team is adequately staffed month on month, through use of HealthRoster and Loop.

To work some night shifts in negotiation with the service manager

The SPA/OOHCR Senior Practitioner will contribute to the provision of safe and reliable services by:

• Using supervision and clinical audits to ensure that their supervisees are maintaining high quality during calls and assessments
• Providing expert safeguarding advice to the team and seeking support from trust safeguarding leads in complex cases
• Undertaking risk formulation with the support of the SPA Consultant Psychiatrists and ensuing that risk concerns are acted on promptly.
• Providing clinical and management supervision to the SPA Practitioners

All SPA/OOHCR Practitioners expected to be registered with their respective regulatory body and to adhere to their Regulatory Body’s Code of Conduct.

Applicant requirements

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

The postholder will have access to vulnerable people in the course of their normal duties and as such this post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions.