Community Vocational Support Worker
Thank you for your interest for the North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT), it is an exciting time to join us and being part of our journey to improve mental health care across North London and deliver excellent services to our local people. We will achieve this through the North London Way, as we:
- Collaborate at every level by living our Values to create the right conditions for us all to work together.
- Develop our new Trust culture, to help make our new Trust a great place to work and to receive great care.
- Empower our teams to lead the planned improvements in our services, by skilling them and giving them the tools to make the changes.
- Focus on delivering excellence at every level to improve our performance and ensure consistently high-quality care across all our services.
- Ensure that research, Quality Improvement, and technology lead the way and are embedded in our services.
- Take a trauma informed approach to everything we do
We proactively welcome diversity in our workforce and pride ourselves on being an inclusive employer. We aim to recruit from our local communities and provide opportunities to all including apprenticeships, veterans, care leavers and more.
The North London Way to deliver, Better Mental Health, Better Lives, Better Communities.
Our trust website is: https://www.northlondonmentalhealth.nhs.uk/
Job overview
A fantastic opportunity for a Vocational Support Worker to join our occupational therapy and vocational team within the North London Forensic Service (NLFS) providing medium and low secure in-patient and forensic outreach services for those suffering from mental illness and/or learning disabilities.The team provides comprehensive input across admission, rehabilitation, pre-discharge and outreach services.
Main duties of the job
The post holder will be required to support individuals in accessing employment and educational opportunities, working closely with third sector organisations and multidisciplinary teams. You will work collaboratively with the employment, training and education team implementing and supporting vocational pathways between inpatient and community services, and support service users to access work placement schemes with aim of developing skills and confidence enabling community integration and rehabilitation.
Working for our 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.
Our Five-Year Strategy:
- 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 supportive environment to deliver outstanding care.
- We will be more effective as an organisation by pioneering research, quality improvement and technology.
- 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
- Excellent internal staff network
The post holder will be aligned with our Values:
- We Are Kind
- We Are Respectful
- We Work Together
- We Keep Things Simple
- We Empower
- We Are Proudly Diverse
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.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
The post holder will be required to work autonomously at times with service users who may have diverse needs and presentations, often with psychotic symptoms, secondary diagnosis of personality disorder, and who can exhibit aggressive behaviour, poor insight and have offending histories.The role contributes to the wider multidisciplinary team and includes attending weekly meetings, face to face contact with service users, supporting individuals in travelling to courses/employment and developing links with external services.
Verbal and written clear and adaptable communication, risk assessment skills and contribution to clinical discussion is a vital part of the job. The ETE programme uses a recovery-orientated approach to deliver personalised support tailored specifically to meet the needs and aspirations of each individual service user.
Service aims are focused on co-production with an emphasis on encouraging social inclusion, improving self-esteem, confidence, self-belief and hope for the future, cultivating the discovery or re-discovery of a sense of personal identity; and developing meaningful structure promoting inclusion in their local communities.
Person specification
Qualification and education
Essential criteria- NVQ 3
- • Qualifications in healthcare/employability related courses.
Experience & knowledge
Essential criteria- Experience of working with individuals with Severe and enduring mental illness
- Supporting people into employment
Skills and abilities
Essential criteria- • Effective communication and IT skills, Effective caseload and time management skills, including the ability to prioritise and problem solve
- • Skills in managing challenging behaviours or difficult situations.