Band 3 Health Care Support Worker - Devizes

Job overview

Are you looking to develop a career in mental health? We are looking to recruit compassionate, resilient and enthusiastic Healthcare Support Workers within our 20 bedded acute unit.

Poppy Unit is a 20 bedded mixed acute unit located in the heart of Wiltshire. We work with a range of service users who are presenting as acutely unwell and in crises.

This is an exciting opportunity for you to develop a rewarding career where you can make a real difference to help change the lives of our service user group for the better.

We are looking for professional and enthusiastic support worker to come and work with our wonderful team of qualified nurses, HCA's, Occupational Therapists, Physiotherapist, Exercise Specialists, Activities Coordinator and Doctors.

This role is within a acute inpatient ward that operates on a 24/7 shift basis. Staff will qualify for unsocial enhancements in addition to their basic pay.

Successful applicants will also be required to undertake and complete a Prevention and Management of Violence and Aggression course. This enables staff to begin building the skills to de escalate service users in peaks of distress whilst maintaining a safe and therapeutic environment for all.

Main duties of the job

This is an exciting opportunity for you to develop a rewarding career where you can make a real difference to help change the lives of our service user group for the better. You will be expected to carry out observations, engage with service users, encourage tasks of daily living, promote recovery whilst demonstrating excellent communication.

This can be a challenging yet rewarding environment where as a team we strive to help our service users to overcome a variety of complex needs.

You will be able to learn and understand how to care for service users that are in mental health crisis by promoting choice and independence in the least restrictive way possible.

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 deliver high quality care and recovery interventions for service users within designated clinical areas, in collaboration with, and under the

• Supporting individuals with fluids and nutrition, physical wellbeing, and personal care.
• Assisting service users with financial or accommodation issues.
• Escorting or accompanying service users for planned periods of leave on hospital grounds and in the community facilitating social inclusion.
• Encouraging service users to talk about their experiences in one-to-one or group discussions.
• To help maintain a clean, well-organised, safe and therapeutic environment that meets the needs of service users, carers and colleagues, and to support registered care staff to perform standardised environmental assessments to monitor and improve the care setting.
• To deliver psychosocially-informed one to one and group interventions aiming to positively impact service users’ cognitive and emotional wellbeing.
• To work as part of a multi-disciplinary team. To assume lead or link roles on core practice initiatives and priorities (e.g. Essence of Care, Safe

• To integrate areas of personal interest with clinical practice to enhance the diversity of the team’s provision of care.
• To practise planned care, and to directly participate in the development of recovery-focused interventions that address service users’ and carers’ needs and preferences.
• To proactively review, record and assess the on-going impacts of such interventions.
• To participate in the on-going care planning, CPA and risk assessment processes in collaboration with service users, their carer’s, and other

• To maintain a basic working understanding of both the Mental Health Act (1983) and Mental Capacity Act (2005), and any other relevant

• To adhere to AWP’s Code of Conduct for unregistered practitioners; promoting and embedding it through the delivery of peer support and

• To observe and record interactions with service users and carers both verbally and in writing via clinical records and staff handovers.
• To deliver a wide range of fundamental care interventions using evidence based clinical tools, to monitor and improve physical health and personal wellbeing and to model a high standard of dignity, respect and candour.
• To engage in reflective practice to maintain and promote ongoing clinical practice.
• To promote and enhance a positive learning culture, being proactive in the induction, orientation and support of junior, temporary and newly

appointed Health Care Support Workers, seeking to embed core care values into practice.

Person specification

Experience

• Experience within Mental Health

Skills

• Ability to work with a degree of autonomy, whilst also taking direction from senior colleagues.
• Ability to communicate in written and verbal English to a high standard, and basic numeracy skills.

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.