Lead PCN Mental Health practitioner

Overview

If you're a Mental Health Nurse, Occupational Therapist, Social Worker or other registered professional working within Mental Health and want to work with and across a variety of GP surgeries in Suffolk - this could be the ideal role for you! The role will involve leading on the routine mental healthcare of the Deben Health Group South Primary Care Network, which covers four GP surgeries in Woodbridge and Aldeburgh.

As Lead PCN Mental Health Practitioner, you'll play an incredibly important role in transforming community mental health services. We're working collaboratively to offer 'Place Based Care' - ensuring communities receive fast and effective treatment, in the familiar surroundings of their GP surgery.

Your role will include shaping the service while managing a small team of Mental Health Practitioners. You will set up and deliver patient clinics that provide support, medication advice (if qualified to prescribe), treatment, education and problem-solving approaches to members of our community experiencing challenges with their mental health. You ll be providing a dedicated growing service that makes sure individual needs are met in a seamless environment.

We are happy to accept part-time applications and can be flexible / happy to discuss different working patterns, provided these are within and around the GP practice working and enhanced hours., Primary Care Networks (PCNs) are groups of GP practices who work together in a local geographical area. In this Case, the Deben Health South Group South PCN covers four Coastal GP surgeries in Suffolk, primarily based in Woodbridge and Aldeburgh.

East Suffolk has 12 PCNs in total.

As the Lead PCN Mental Health practitioner, you will be the lead for a small team of staff in addition to the day-to-day operational and clinical mental health issues arising in your allocated GP Practice/s. You ll work at a quick pace, autonomously managing your own clinics and will provide an intervention led approach, acting as an incredibly important mental health resource for people who need specialist care and interventions not available through NHS Talking Therapies and not requiring Secondary Care level services.

You will work with patients from age 18 carrying out routine mental health assessments and will be an important conduit into specialist mental health services if and where required.

The ideal candidate will be conscientious, kind and compassionate - you ll be able to work well independently but will also have the support of the wider team and training. Driven by the needs of those who use your service, you will need to have good organisational skills, System resource awareness and experience working in a mental health setting.

You will be an autonomous practitioner, making clinical judgements, identifying alternative courses of action, managing, and providing high-quality care.

Your role is an unusual and important one, helping to bridge any gaps between Primary and Secondary health care services. You will be comfortable working collaboratively and able to build strong relationships with health care professionals across your network and within your designated GP practices.

Here at NSFT we pride ourselves on being a welcoming, talented, friendly and supportive team who like nothing better than sharing experiences and learning from each other. In addition to ongoing training and development opportunities, we are committed to providing an environment in which you can thrive.

The people here are warm and welcoming, you ll never be far from the beautiful coastline or Broads National Park. We re an hour and a half away from London and have an international airport in Norwich too. Our villages, towns and cities are packed full of history, independent cafes, shops and theatres. We have excellent shopping, eating out, top ranking schooling and affordable house prices too.

Feedback from service users who have benefited from this new approach has included:

"It was very good to be able to speak openly and frankly about my mental health with a professional person as I didn t want to burden friends and family."

"I was listened to and was given positive suggestions to help me and provided links to other sources to help. Knowing that help is available, and a follow up appointment made really gave me some confidence to be more positive."