Senior Community Mental Health Nurse/Occupational Therapist

Job overview

Are you a qualified Mental Health Nurse or Occupational Therapist seeking an opportunity to develop yourself further, in a specialist service?

We are seeking a qualified Mental Health Nurse or Occupational Therapist to join the Oxford Early Intervention Service in a varied role within a niche, specialist service. You will be offered specialised training, enabling you to increase your knowledge base and to advance your practice. The role can be challenging at times, due to the sensitive needs and difficult points in the lives of our patients, but you will be rewarded with outcomes that change lives, and you will have the support of a highly motivated and passionate team around you.

This is an opportunity in a service with a strong team focus. We have regular shared lunches which provides an opportunity to spend some quality time together, as well as weekly meetings which focus on supporting the team in achieving high levels of care. We provide supervision in all areas, including behavioural family therapy.

The successful candidate will have excellent interpersonal skills, a strong understanding of mental health, particularly psychosis and the impact this can have on an individual as well as their family, friends and carers. You will need to have a good understanding of monitoring risk in the community and an understanding and experience of working with patients who experience psychosis.

Applicants will need the ability to travel across Oxfordshire to see patients within their homes.

Main duties of the job

The responsibilities of the role include, but are not limited to:

• To provide assessment of the care needs of individuals and their families/carers who present with first episode psychosis or at-risk mental states.
• To develop, implement and evaluate programmes of care to appropriate individuals and their families/carers in the community.
• To manage a caseload of clients with complex needs, up to a maximum of 18 dependent on needs.
• To assess clients/carers needs, using appropriate evidence-based assessment tools.
• Participate in OEIS duty rota, receiving, triaging and assessing new referrals into the team and providing timely assessment to meet the new referral to treatment times

You will be holding a reduced caseload in the community which entails completing highly complex assessments, including the assessment of risk, identifying needs and develop care plans jointly with patients and carers underpinned by evidence-based practice.

You will be ensuring and monitoring that evidenced interventions for first episodes of psychosis have been provided within time recommended.

The team is dedicated to providing excellent care and service through evidence-based interventions, research and quality improvement work. We work closely with families and carers as well as other services including social services who may be involved in supporting our patients/clients. The team enjoy having a range of students learning and working with them and have gained consistent positive feedback.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

We hope that the advert has given you a clear understanding of the skills we are seeking and the opportunity at hand. You will need to use the “supporting statement” element of your application form to demonstrate your suitability for this role and you should refer to the job description, person specification and the guidance notes attached to this role to help you tailor your application.

The essential and desirable criteria will be used to shortlist for interview and you should ensure that you refer to these within your application to increase your chances of being selected for interview.