Clinical Practice Lead in Devon

We are looking for a Clinical Practice Lead who has a professional qualification as a registered Mental Health Nurse, a mental health Social Worker or a mental health Occupational Therapist to join the First Response Service team based in Exeter. The role is to lead and develop the First Response Service, triaging and responding to crisis referrals, providing tele-coaching psychological interventions, guidance and signposting, and delivering timely face-to-face assessments where indicated. The post is Band 7 and covers a 24/7 service with a variety of shift patterns. This is an excellent opportunity to advance a rewarding career within an accolade-winning mental health trust.

The First Response Service is growing and evolving, delivering a high quality mental health service to many people. Clinically leading frontline staff will make a difference to people’s lives from the moment you join us.

Main duties of the job

• This is an ideal post for an experienced Senior Mental Health Practitioner or a current clinical lead seeking a change of direction.
• You will use extensive clinical skills and experience to lead on high quality care, develop and sustain compassionate leadership, and use evidence-based practice and routine outcome measures in collaboration with all stakeholders.
• You will be involved in risk assessment and management, and you will work a 24/7 shift pattern to meet service needs.
• Supervision of junior staff and trainees is expected, with developmental support and training provided to pursue a fulfilling career.

Responsibilities

• Workforce planning
• Lead on evidence-based clinical interventions and autonomous decision-making
• Promote a recovery model empowering service users in decision making and ownership of care
• Champion dignity, equality, diversity, choice and respect
• Prioritise demand and allocation/delegation accordingly
• Work flexibly across a range of sites with regular and frequent travel
• Lone working at times
• Quality improvement and audit
• Compliance with CQC standards
• Managing complaints and compliments
• Learning from experience
• Practise education and development

Duties and responsibilities

• Communication and working relationship skills: collaborate with internal and external stakeholders including Police, Social Services, Housing, voluntary and health and social care communities; ensure signposting along care pathways for adults
• Act as a point of contact for agencies seeking information or referrals
• Present information to staff groups, service user groups, carers groups and other stakeholders
• Coordinate and investigate complaints and clinical practice performance issues; disseminate lessons learned
• Ensure learning from serious incidents and root cause analyses is identified and applied

Analytical and Judgemental skills

• Role model clinical leadership
• Promote recovery and minimise dependency
• Communicate complex information clearly to users and multi-agency teams
• Duty of care and safe, competent care
• Consider service user wishes, beliefs and values in care planning
• Personal accountability for practice
• Maintain professional competence via supervision
• Demonstrate specialist knowledge across services
• Establish internal clinical audits and contribute to service research
• Produce timely evaluation data and reports

Planning and organisational skills

• Coordinate multi-agency forums to deliver integrated local services
• Ensure service activity meets agreed quality and performance standards and SLAs
• Facilitate education and learning from experience
• Work constructively with the multi-disciplinary team
• Oversee day-to-day clinical practice
• Governance and assurance systems for care pathways and clinical practice
• Ensure services are delivered by practitioners with appropriate knowledge and competencies
• Coordinate multi-disciplinary team work and service delivery in line with practice standards
• Implement risk management, governance and assurance to ensure safety and effectiveness
• Promote NICE-aligned quality and continuously improve the service

Patient/Client care, treatment and therapy

• Promote and role-model high standards of clinical care
• Adopt a holistic approach to assessment, care and treatment, including physical health needs
• Ensure effective care pathways for transition between mental health and other services
• Monitor and support clinical performance of team members
• Collaborate with internal teams and external sectors to implement NICE criteria for diagnosis, treatment and management
• Participate in safeguarding
• Provide expert advice for complex cases
• Maintain clinical governance standards and develop enhanced clinical skills

About Devon Partnership Trust

We provide mental health, learning disability and neurodiversity services, with a range of specialist and secure services for the south west region and nationally. We are committed to promoting good mental health and wellbeing, delivering high quality services that are safe and recovery-focused.

Our values and equality

We recruit individuals who demonstrate the values of quality of care, improving lives, respect, dignity and compassion. We are an inclusive employer and welcome applications from all sections of the community, including those with lived experience of mental health and learning disabilities. We are a Disability Confident Employer.

Qualifications:

• Essential: A professional mental health qualification to degree level or equivalent
• Postgraduate qualification relevant to the specialist area
• Evidence of commitment to lifelong learning and continuing professional development

Desirable:

• Management qualification
• Level 3 safeguarding children and young people training

Knowledge:

• Knowledge of key areas of professional mental health practice and disorders
• Knowledge of clinical risk assessment and signposting applications
• Bio-psycho-social assessment and robust care pathway formulation
• Higher level communication skills; ability to engage distressed individuals and de-escalate
• Sufficient knowledge to make autonomous decisions considering complex presentations
• Management and organisational skills for multiple activities and clinical work
• Knowledge of the Mental Health Act, Mental Capacity and Deprivation of Liberty safeguards
• Information technology skills

Experience:

• Substantial post-qualifying experience including community mental health care
• Risk assessment/management and working with people in mental health crisis
• Clinical leadership and therapeutic work with individuals
• Ability to interpret research and apply to practice
• Experience with counselling/CBT skills and psychosocial interventions
• Experience managing clients with substance use/dual diagnosis
• Experience in assessments, care pathways and diagnosis
• Teaching, training and supervision experience

Skills:

• Excellent communication with diverse groups
• Ability to produce well-written reports and communicate across multi-agency teams
• Support junior staff and develop team competencies
• Develop a positive team culture and manage time effectively
• Mobility across a geographical area

Regulatory and registration:

UK Registration: Applicants must have current UK professional registration.