Health Care Assistant - City & Hackney Centre for Mental Health
Our values are: We Care, We Respect, We are Inclusive – so we are looking for people who live and breathe these qualities when supporting service users and carers, and in their relationships with colleagues in the Trust and our partner organisations.
Job overview
East London NHS Foundation Trust currently provides inpatient mental health and learning disability services in North East London.
Are you a good listener, someone people go to when distressed or troubled, someone who knows the right thing to say or the right thing to do, someone who does not judge, does not make assumptions and can see the potential in everyone?
As a Health Care Assistant (HCA) you will work as part of a multidisciplinary team on an in-patient ward, with supervision, support and training you will deliver interventions defined within the personalised care plan, spend time engaging, connecting, supporting patients, families, carers and friends through their recovery pathway.You will help facilitate activities/groups and ward based projects and be actively involved in every aspect of their physical, psychological and social care.
The successful candidate will work on one of our acute inpatient wards City & Hackney Centre for Mental Health. Our acute mental health wards provide care, acute psychiatric assessment and treatment for men and women who are experiencing acute episodes of mental illness.
We have vacancies on male and female acute wards, and male psychiatric intensive care unit.
Main duties of the job
This is an ideal first job in mental health, suitable for those with life experience or an opportunity for those with a psychology degree to gain clinical experience.
However; previous experience in a similar health care setting would be an advantage; good computer skills are essential and will give you the upper hand if you are appointed. The ideal applicant will have experience in mental health facilitating and meeting the various individual needs of service users whilst under direction and supervision by senior colleagues and the clinical nurse manager.
Working for our organisation
Our mission is to make a positive difference to people's lives by improving the quality of life for all we serve. Our values are: We Care, We Respect, We are Inclusive – so we are looking for people who live and breathe these qualities when supporting service users and carers, and in their relationships with colleagues in the Trust and our partner organisations.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Please see detailed job description and person specification. Please refer to this prior to applying for the role.
Person specification
Education/ Qualification/ Training
Essential criteria- Educated to GCSE level of equivalent Completed or the willingness to undertake Care certificate
- GCSE Grade A-C in Maths & English or skills level 2 Maths & English or equivalent
Experience
Essential criteria- Working in a care setting
- Dealing with challenging situations
- Working with Mental Health Service Users
- Insight into how to evaluate own strengths and development needs, seeking advice where appropriate
- Experience of providing and receiving complex, sensitive information
Knowledge and Skills
Essential criteria- Excellent verbal and written communication skills
- Able to manage time to meet deadlines
- Ability to work autonomously
- Ability to work as part of a team
- Be able to respond with compassion and empathy
- Demonstrate an understanding of caring for people with mental health problems
- Demonstrate a degree of emotional intelligence and self-reflection
- Demonstrate an understanding of the specialty
- Ability to take part in reflective practice and clinical supervision activities
- Ability to deal with non- routine and unpredictable nature of workload and individual patient contact
- Knowledge of when to seek advice and escalate to the appropriate professional for expert help and advice
Making Things Better
Quality Improvement is a key part of our work to improve our services and refine how we do things. We have a global reputation for our quality improvement work and we don’t stand still! So we offer a fantastic opportunity for our staff to learn, lead and contribute towards improving our services.
We launched our Five Year Strategy in April 2018, which identified four main strategic outcomes to improve: population health outcomes, experience of care, staff experience and improve value. This complements the NHS Long Term Strategy and sets out our direction of travel.
Our Community
We provide a wide range of community health and mental health inpatient services to children, young people, adults of working age, and older adults in The City of London, Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Bedfordshire and Luton. We also provide psychological therapy services to the London Borough of Richmond, and provide Forensic services to the whole of North East London.We provide services in urban and rural settings, sometimes in our inpatient units, but mostly in the community close to where people live. Integrated care is key in making the best use of resources and providing effective care.
Aiming High
We were rated ‘Outstanding’ by the CQC in 2016, were proud to be rated ‘Outstanding’ again in 2018 and continue to be rate 'Outstanding' in 2021.. We were named in the HSJ’s Top 10 best places to work in healthcare and were voted Provider Trust of the Year in 2018.
Staff and Service Users United
We strive to ensure that staff feel valued by the Trust and as they are truly pivotal in delivering better outcomes for our patients and service users. Our aspiration is to help to make ELFT the best place to work. This Trust is clinician-led and provides the highest possible level of clinical expertise throughout its services.We pride ourselves on our service user involvement. A service user will be on your assessment centre and interview panel if you are invited to meet us.
We especially welcome people with lived experience of health difficulties, with insight and understanding of different backgrounds, cultures and lifestyles in our population as we believe that this will equip staff to deliver a high standard of care to our service users and patients.
Diversity
ELFT Is committed to being a diverse organisation and our workforce is reflective of the population and communities we serve. We believe that having colleagues with a range of backgrounds and life experiences enriches and adds value to the outcomes we have set out to achieve.Having partnered and endorsed by organisations who are representative and experts in various areas of equality and diversity, we can ensure we are meeting the pre-set standards all the way from recruitment stage throughout the career journey of our employees by being accessible, having fair inclusive practices and a host of staff networks to support, nurture and celebrate our valued staff in the workplace.
Other reasons to apply
As a flexible working friendly organisation, we want to be sure that you can work in a way that is best for us and for our patients, and for you. Speak to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement whether that’s job share, part time or another flexible pattern.
As part of the relocation scheme we presently have, the Trust could support you with offering up to £10,000 for removal and associated expenses. This is subject to change and terms and conditions apply.
What Next?
If you like the sound of ELFT, don’t waste a moment. We sometimes close adverts early if there is a high response, so apply now!
As part of our recruitment process we may be required to share information you provide on the application form with NHS Counter Fraud Authority (NHSCFA) and/or other organisations for the purpose of the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of fraud or any other unlawful activity affecting the NHS.We also use third party providers to check and verify your qualifications who may be contacting you on our behalf to verify the same..
If you do not hear from us within four weeks of the closing date, please consider that you have not been shortlisted on this occasion. You must provide professional email addresses for all referees as we will contact them as soon as an offer has been made.Please note we do not request references prior to interviews. All applications made through NHS Jobs account will be processed by TRAC System. Please note that some emails may go to your spam/junk mailbox so make sure you check this regularly.
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