Islington CRT, Band 4 Assistant Practitioner | North London NHS Foundation Trust

Are you an enthusiastic and passionate individual? Do you enjoy working in a fast-paced, ever-changing mental health service? Would you like to enhance your clinical decision-making and assessment skills and confidence in managing numerous crisis presentations both over the telephone and face to face?

We have a recent and exciting opportunity to appoint Assistant Practitioners in the Islington Crisis Resolution Team and are looking for enthusiastic, committed individuals who enjoy working with acutely unwell service users with a broad range of mental health and social issues.

Covering the central London Borough of Camden & Islington, the team offers an intensive crisis assessment, resolution and home treatment service providing mental health crisis care to our local residents aged 18 and upwards. Crisis home treatment promotes social inclusion and also supports the social network in caring for the individual in the least restrictive environment. The Crisis Team acts as an alternative to hospital admission. In order to fulfil this role, the team provides a fully operational 24-hour service, 365 days per year.

Successful applicants will be required to have proven and post-qualification experience with desirable acute setting experience. You must be willing and committed to working as part of a 24-hour rota to include weekends. As most of our service user contact takes place within their own home, you must also be able to either drive (we utilise Trust vehicles) or to be able to travel independently via public transport. Although we do work as a team, the capacity and confidence to undertake lone working is essential.

In addition to face-to-face interventions (brief supportive counselling, crisis de-escalation, assessment), you will also possess strong telephone negotiation and support skills and be part of a rotating staff roster which operates Camden and Islington's crisis single point of access line. Here, our staff are able to successfully support the community by offering a clinically led mental health telephone line which triages crisis calls, helping to problem solve at this initial point of contact whilst allowing colleagues on the ground to focus on delivering quality face-to-face contacts.

Excellent verbal and written communication skills are an expected pre-requisite as is the capacity to utilise all forms of electronic communication. The Trust uses electronic record-keeping throughout all its services and we are working towards becoming a paper-free organisation.

North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT) is committed to improving mental health care across North London to deliver excellent services to our local people. We will provide consistently high-quality care closer to home. With our partners in North London and each borough, we will ensure equity of outcome for all. We will offer great places to work, providing staff with a supportive environment to deliver outstanding care.

Why NLFT? We develop and retain our staff through leadership behaviours and managers programme and many more opportunities. We promote flexible working and support staff with a range of health and wellbeing initiatives. NHS Discounts, generous annual leave and NHS pension scheme.

In order to meet the needs of the Trust, you may be required from time to time to work at different locations to your normal place of work. This may mean that you are required to work at any location that falls under Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey or Islington. The Trust reserves the right to require staff to work at such other places or locations as it considers reasonable and necessary on a temporary or permanent basis.

The Crisis Resolution Teams offer specialised crisis service in-house training for all new staff and there are a lot of training and professional development opportunities within the Trust. These include Quality Improvement and courses in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

All applications for this post need to be made online with reference to the Person Specification. Please apply at the end of the advert and register with this site as directed. Any application that does not meet the requirements of the Person Specification will not be shortlisted for interview. All shortlisted applicants will be contacted by email and are advised to check their email accounts regularly. If you have not been contacted within 4 weeks of your application being submitted then it is likely you have not been shortlisted.