Community Health and Wellbeing Worker in City of London

As Community Health and Wellbeing Worker (CHWW) you will be working with allocated households in the North Lewisham PCN area, who have been identified by the local GP surgery. The work of a CHWW is varied with the aim to build relationships with the householders to support them to improve their health and wellbeing. You will play an important role in promoting health and healthy lifestyles, prevention and early detection, and supporting health literacy through a range of activities including outreach, assessments, brief interventions, community education, signposting, informal counselling and advocacy.

Main duties of the job

• Build relationships with assigned households to understand their needs and context.
• Offer coaching and motivational approaches including problem solving and goal setting.
• Deliver personalised health promotion and support healthy choices and education, such as screening and immunisations whilst providing health literacy support.
• Provide support and signposting with lifestyle advice such as social activities, smoking cessation, healthy diet and physical exercise.
• Support households to understand the health and social care system.

Health Literacy (training provided)

• Support those eligible for childhood immunisations and adult health and cancer screening appointments and encourage the uptake of missed appointments.
• Support disease diagnosis and management through raising awareness of adherence to medication.
• Encourage early identification of signs and symptoms of chronic illness and share the information as provided by practices.
• Identify household determinants of ill health and health seeking behaviour.
• Signpost and refer people to services across the health and care system and other existing community services.

Day to Day Administration

• Keep digital records that reflect household and community need and progress via secure tablet that will be linked to the clinical system used by the General Practice.
• Comply with data protection and confidentiality.
• Maintain skills in using technology and primary care software.
• Present your work and findings to the local GP and multidisciplinary team.

Community Engagement/Co-Production

• Engage with the community to ensure health services are satisfactory and appropriate in their design and delivery.
• Facilitate networks within communities to build community capacity.
• Advocate the needs as outlined by the community.
• Identify local community assets and promote a community-based prevention agenda.
• Take part in supervision and debriefing.

Person Specification

• Basic computer skills and use of Microsoft office and email.
• The ability to complete data entry and documentation.
• GCSE in Maths & English OR Level 2 Functional Skills as an equivalent.
• Strong knowledge of local community agencies, services and resources.
• Strong links to the local community and knowledge of local community demographics and culture.
• Strong interpersonal and communication, social perceptiveness and observational skills.
• Able to produce reports and give presentations.
• Good problem-solving with creative thinking.
• Excellent organisational and time management skills.
• Knowledge and experience of working with adults, babies and children.
• Able to remain stable, calm and in control in a crisis and be measured in your response.
• Able to work on own initiative, organising and prioritising own workload to set deadlines.
• Ability to maintain confidentiality and trust.
• Ability to work flexibly including on occasional weekends and evenings.
• Ability to work as part of a team and operate in a way that is consistent with the organisational values.
• Ability to maintain effective working relationships and to promote collaborative practice with all colleagues.
• Community based experience providing advocacy and support which has included public contact.
• Completion of a higher education certificate or diploma which has included public contact through internship, volunteer experience, or other experience.
• Experience of Health or advice and guidance programmes.
• Volunteering in the community.
• Knowledge of basic health promotion and protection.
• Knowledge of the NHS and broader services.
• Basic understanding of child development.
• Knowledge of Local Languages.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.