Band 4 Nursery Nurse - Bristol

Job overview

The Specialist Community Perinatal Mental Health Team provides support for women who experience serious mental health problems or present with a high risk of relapse during pregnancy and the postnatal period. The team is able to work alongside women and their families until the babies first birthday.

The team work across Bristol, North Somerset, & South Gloucestershire (BNSSG). The team has a shared care ethos, working closely with primary care, maternity services, adult mental health teams, early years’ services and independent sector organisations to ensure that women can have access to specialist support, advice, risk assessment and care planning in relation to their mental health needs.

The Perinatal Nursery Nurse will work with service users over a variety of areas, but particularly in relation to caring for their child, and ensuring the bonding with, and wellbeing of, their baby. They will have regular contact with the mother; the frequency of this will be agreed between service user and nursery nurse and be dependent on need and level of support required.

Main duties of the job

The Perinatal Nursery Nurse approach will be person centred, adapting to changing needs, but incorporates some of the following:

• Managing the expectation and practicalities of motherhood
• Antenatal support: bonding with bump, looking after yourself during pregnancy, exploring what parting values are important to you. Preparing hospital bag, what equipment/recourses are needed to care for a baby.
• Support with bonding and attachment - postnatal.
• Managing emotions of the mother and signpost to appropriate additional local support if needed (within team and without), and enabling them to feel confident managing their babies emotions.
• Practical parent craft
• Baby Massage (Bonding, value of touch, responsiveness, understanding your babies communication)
• Neonatal Behaviour Observation (NBO)( getting to know your baby)
• Breast/bottle feeding and expressing
• Sleep Hygiene, managing expectations and highlighting sleep patterns in babies
• Support with adapting to new role as a mother
• Early play and development work
• Listening visits (support for mum)
• Signposting (NHS and voluntary/charitable)

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

The perinatal Nursery Nurse will also be involved in identifying and managing any risk that may be present, reporting this as appropriate/necessary, and supporting the process to reduce this risk. They will liaise with other members of the Perinatal Team, in particular the Perinatal Care Coordinator/Associate Worker, and other individuals involved in the service users care.

This role will involve a significant amount of travel.

You are strongly encouraged to contact the team before you apply in order to understand the unique aspects of this role

Person specification

Experience

• Good communication skills

• Working with other professionals particularly in regard to safeguarding issues

Qualifications & skills

• Qualification in BTEC level 3 Diploma in Early Years OR CACHE Diploma in Child care and Education, Level 3 (2 year course) OR NVQ/SNVQ level 3 in Early Years and Education •
• Up to date with current child care practice as recommended by Department of Health and ability to teach service and other staff
• Can demonstrate an understanding of how mental health issues can affect people
• Good organisational and time management ability
• Hold current driving licence and have access to vehicle for work purposes

• Baby massage training

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.