Mental Health Social Worker - City and North East
Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust has been rated as Good by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
We are a responsive and innovative Foundation Trust that places our values of Caring, Safe and Excellent at the heart of everything we do. We take great pride in our staff and believe that investing in you is key to us achieving our vision of outstanding care delivered by outstanding people.
We work with a wide range of partner organisations to deliver care and support to people in their own homes and from a number of hospitals and community bases. We focus on delivering care as close to home as possible for people of all ages across Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Swindon, Wiltshire, Bath and North East Somerset.
We actively support anti-racism, equality, diversity, and inclusion so, if you’re excited about this job opportunity and you meet our Trust values, but feel unsure about applying, then please get in touch and we will be happy to have a conversation with you.
We are also committed to increasing diversity in the workforce, that is why we actively encourage applications from those groups of people who are currently under-represented, which include amongst others: people with disabilities; men from all socio-economic backgrounds; people from diverse ethnic backgrounds; and people from the LGBTQIA+ community.
Good luck and we hope to hear from you.
Job overview
Do you have experience working as an Inpatient or Community Social Worker?
Do you want to transform the lives of people with mental health conditions?
We welcome applicants who are newly qualified and who are interested in a Band 5 development post.
We are a friendly and dynamic integrated mental health team in the beautiful City of Oxford and we are looking for strengths based social workers, who are committed to promoting the social perspective of mental health. Based in Headington, Shabs and Hilda will actively promote for you to be a relational based social worker and enhance your social work leadership skills to enable you to flourish and develop in your role.
We invest in higher level post qualifying professional development and our monthly social work forum is where our energetic collective meet to share ideas and talk about the messy stuff.
Newly qualified? Don’t worry! We will give you the opportunity to develop a strong foundation in social work values and ethics (and all the complicated legal bits in between!). Our ASYE programme is excellent and you will have a protected case load for the duration of the supported year of practice.
Main duties of the job
You will play a crucial role in improving mental health outcomes for our service users. You will bring a distinctive social and rights based perspective to the work that you do and promote this within the multi-disciplinary team and beyond. You will liaise with other agencies to ensure that the needs and rights of people with lived experience of mental health are at the front and centre of services and interventions.
You will use your advanced relationship skills to work with people to make positive and self-directed change and support them to work towards recovery as defined by them. You will provide advocacy support and understand the important role of carers, working in partnership to support them especially at time of crisis.
Providing statutory social care assessments under the Care Act and s.117 after-care Mental Health Act is a key feature of the role and you will provide a strengths based, rights focused assessment to identify and meet need, ensuring timely review of packages of support.
Working with complexity and risk is a key feature of the role and you will use your safeguarding adults knowledge to identify abuse and neglect and work with the person and other agencies to seek ways in which to protect and safeguard the person.At times, you will need to use legislative frameworks such as the Mental Capacity Act and Mental Health Act to support people who are unable to make decisions for themselves, balancing and protecting the rights of people and others.
Working for our organisation
Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust provides physical, mental health and social care for people of all ages across Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Swindon, Wiltshire, Bath and North East Somerset.
Our services are delivered at community bases, hospitals, clinics and people’s homes, delivering care as close to home as possible
Our vision is that no matter who you are or where you are, you will tell us that you receive: “Outstanding care delivered by an outstanding team”Our values are: “Caring, safe and excellent”
At Oxford Health we offer a wide range of benefits designed to support your career and wellbeing. These include:
- Excellent opportunities for career progression
- Access to tailored individual and Trust wide learning and development
- 27 days annual leave, plus bank holidays, rising to 33 days with continuous service
- NHS Discount across a wide range of shops, restaurants and retailers
- Competitive pension scheme
- Lease car scheme
- Cycle to work scheme
- Employee Assistance Programme
- Mental Health First Aiders
- Staff accommodation (please note waiting lists may apply)
- Staff networking and support groups hosted by our Equality, Diversity & Inclusion team
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
We hope that the advert has given you a clear understanding of the skills we are seeking and the opportunity at hand. You will need to use the “supporting statement” element of your application form to demonstrate your suitability for this role and you should refer to the job description, person specification and the guidance notes attached to this role to help you tailor your application.The essential and desirable criteria will be used to shortlist for interview and you should ensure that you refer to these within your application to increase your chances of being selected for interview.
Our community need social workers to work full time (yes - you are that valued!) but we understand the importance of work life balance so if you have other interests that you want to develop then let’s have a chat to see how we can help you achieve a balance that works for you.
Our diverse community would love to have you join the team so get in touch for an informal chat.
Person specification
Experience
Essential criteria- Qualified social worker or nearing completion of social work degree/Masters
- Understanding of mental health conditions and models of mental disorder
- Experience of assessing need and implementing and reviewing care and support packages
- Higher level qualification -BIA and/or AMHP
Knowledge
Essential criteria- Practical knowledge of the Care Act , Mental Health Act and Mental Capacity Act and associated codes of practice and statutory guidance
- Knowledge of s.42 Care Act safeguarding adults and Making Safeguarding Personal
- Knowledge of how to recognise different forms of abuse and harm and how raise a concern for both adults and children and young people
- Recognising the importance of the social perspective of mental health and the importance of rights based person centred approaches
- Knowledge of the process of applications to the Court of Protection
- Housing legislation
Skills
Essential criteria- Demonstrating the ability to use a strengths and rights based approach to social care assessments under the Care Act and s.117 aftercare
- Ensuring that the social perspective of mental health is promoted to the wider MDT
- Ability to use a range of communication skills to engage people who use mental health services
- All new starters have a thorough induction process, both local and Trust wide, which aims to create a positive supportive working environment allowing new employees to learn key elements of their role over a reasonable timescale.
- Appointment to this post is subject to the trust receiving satisfactory references covering 3 years of employment or study. Please ask your referees to respond promptly to reference requests.
- We’re advocates of flexible working and many of our roles offer a range of employment options to help you balance your work and personal life.
- Employees are expected to undertake mandatory and statutory training related to their role.
- We are ambitious in our pursuit of excellence, driven by the belief that a fair, just and fully inclusive organisational culture enables our teams to deliver the best quality of care and services possible and we work hard to ensure that our diverse workforce reflects the communities that we serve.
- We welcome applications from all sections of the community, are an Equal Opportunities employer with a number of internal networking groups to support our employees and where possible will always look to make reasonable adjustments in order that you can fulfil the role to recognise your full potential. All our employees are committed to demonstrating through their behaviour our core values – safe, caring and excellent.
- We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and vulnerable adults, we expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.
- Oxford is a world-renowned centre of excellence for research. Oxford Health works closely with the University of Oxford department of Psychiatry and the Department of Primary care, has a Biomedical Research Centre dedicated to improving mental health and the NIHR Clinical Research Facility at the Warneford site. The Trust also hosts the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) which carries out applied research that directly impacts patient health and wellbeing