Band 4 Care Home Liaison Support Worker - Salisbury

Job overview

The service is closed on Bank Holidays.

We are looking for an enthusiastic individual, who has experience of working with service users and their families in mental health settings and who has experience or interest in dementia and older people's mental health.

The Wiltshire Care Home Liaison Service provides high quality clinical assessments and interventions to people living in a care home who have a functional mental health difficulty or who have a diagnosis of dementia. Working with supervision of a registered nurse, the support worker develops therapeutic relationships with service users and care home staff to meet the complex needs of clients.

• Promote and champion the rights, values, responsibilities and diversity of people, and act in an open and compassionate way within clear professional boundaries.
• Promote and maintain effective communication with people in order to build and sustain positive working relationships with individuals, families and carers, team members and other agencies. This may include accessing translation and interpreting services.
• Contribute to the planning, implementation and review of care packages, including implementing specific parts of an individual care plan.
• Working autonomously within relevant practice boundaries, under indirect, but not ‘direct’, supervision of registered clinicians.
• Conduct comprehensive assessments of mental health needs and clinical risks.
• Maintain accurate, confidential records of patient activity, contributing to a range of written documents as appropriate.
• Enable people to understand and manage their mental health needs in line with their care plan and relapse prevention strategies.
• Support individuals in developing and maintaining their identity and personal relationships, including potentially difficult relationships.
• Support people to engage with their own health care, in accordance with their care plan.
• Act to protect individuals from abuse and harm in line with local and National policies and procedures.
• Work proactively with carers and families, identifying carers’ needs and signposting to appropriate services or agencies.

Working for our organisation

We are AWP (Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust): a diverse organisation with over 5,000 dedicated staff providing inpatient and community-based mental health care.

We provide services from a range of locations to approximately 1.8 million people living in Bath and North East Somerset (B&NES), Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Swindon, across the county of Wiltshire and in parts of Dorset.

Our outstanding people promote mental health and wellbeing. The expertise and resources within AWP are dedicated to a person-centred approach for those who use our services and for all employees. We recognise that happy and fulfilled employees give better care.

At AWP we actively encourage applicants from all backgrounds; we are particularly keen to encourage applications from people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, those with disabilities and from the LGBTQ+ community. We want people to bring their unique blend of experiences, backgrounds, perspectives and knowledge to AWP, as diversity makes us stronger.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

To provide focused, person-centred support and care interventions to people living in care homes, with dementia or a functional mental health problem. Care Home Liaison is a primary care service providing brief interventions.

To work alongside a multidisciplinary team, under the indirect supervision of registered clinicians, in an associate recovery worker and/or care coordinator role. Key activities will include:

• Forming compassionate, recovery-focused, therapeutic relationships with service users and their carers, supporting them to manage their mental health needs in a community setting.
• Engaging in the full range of ongoing needs assessment processes required by the team, including mental state, dynamic clinical risk, spiritual and cultural needs, and emotional, psychological and physical wellbeing.
• Supporting service users to manage their finances and / or housing needs.
• Empowering service users to self-manage aspects of their ongoing treatment, such as medication, diet and lifestyle, physical health and general wellbeing.
• Depending on the team, key activities may also include:
• Undertaking the role of Care Coordinator for service users who have been assessed as presenting relatively low to moderate levels of clinical complexity and risk, under the guidance and supervision of registered clinicians. AWP Trust guidance on the allocation and management of community support worker caseloads can be found in P032 CPA and Risk Policy.

Person specification

Experience and knowledge

• Experience of working in a care setting
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills

• Experience of working with people living with dementia

This includes people with a variety of disabilities and neurodivergent conditions (for example autism, ADHD, sensory, physical and learning disabilities).

We encourage applications from people who wish to work on a flexible basis, recognising that flexibility may mean a range of different working patterns and hours, we do our utmost to work with our staff to meet their needs and the needs of our service users.

Click here to view our applicant guidance

Please apply to join us, we would love to hear from you. Any personal details you supply to us are kept safe in line with the General Data Protection Regulations.

Adverts normally close for application a few minutes before midnight on the closing date and we will let you know if we are offering you an interview by email via our recruitment system ‘TRAC’. We contact all applicants within 4 weeks after the closing date, so please check your emails regularly once you have submitted your application; you are welcome to contact us, via the TRAC system, if you have any queries about your application.

Please note the use of AI is monitored and if you have used it in your application you are required to declare this.