Housekeeper

Merseycare; Runcorn; On-site; GBP 23,000 - 30,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player in healthcare is seeking a dedicated Housekeeper to join their inpatient mental health service. This role is crucial in ensuring a clean and therapeutic environment for service users, contributing to their overall well-being. As part of a supportive team, you'll be responsible for maintaining hygiene standards, ordering supplies, and assisting with daily operations. The organization values diversity and is committed to providing equal opportunities for all. If you're passionate about making a difference in the lives of others and thrive in a collaborative environment, this position offers a rewarding opportunity to grow your career in a progressive NHS trust.

Qualifications

• NVQ 2 or equivalent experience in a care setting is required.
• Ability to communicate effectively with patients is essential.

Responsibilities

• Maintain a clean and safe environment for service users.
• Order supplies and ensure equipment is fit for purpose.
• Support the nursing team in providing care to patients.

Skills

Teamwork

Communication

Basic understanding of mental illness

First Aid

CPR Training

Education

NVQ 2 or equivalent

Job description

Main area: Support Services

Grade Band: 2

Contract: Permanent

Hours: 37.5 hours per week (Full time)

Job ref: 350-MHC6865541

Site: The Brooker Centre, Town Halton, Runcorn

Salary: £23,615 pro rata per annum

Salary period: Yearly

Closing: 30/12/2024 23:59

Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust celebrates diversity and promotes equal opportunities; we are committed to challenging and eliminating racism and other forms of discrimination and advancing and promoting equality of opportunity in the provision of services and creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We believe that everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and respect.

We take positive action to support disadvantaged groups and also particularly encourage applications from ethnic minorities, disabled and LGBTQIA+ people that are under-represented in our workforce. Furthermore, we welcome applications from reservists and ex-armed forces personnel as we recognise the benefits of the values, skills, training and experience that they bring to their work with us. We encourage all applicants to share their equality information with us.

Job overview

We are seeking an individual to join our inpatient mental health service in our newly developed Housekeeper role.

As a Housekeeper under the supervision of the Registered Nurse and Nursing team, you will support in ensuring a clean and safe environment where the individual needs of our service users are met in a timely and effective manner utilising best practice.

Working as part of the team, you will assist in maintaining a clean and therapeutic environment, ensuring supplies and equipment are ordered in a timely manner, monitoring and ensuring equipment is fit for purpose, as well as welcoming and greeting visitors to the ward.

This post is subject to an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) Check. Successful candidates will be required to pay for the cost of the DBS Disclosure which is £44.00, the cost of which will be deducted from first salary.

Registration with the DBS update service is mandatory for new starters in those roles that require an Enhanced DBS.

Main duties of the job

1. Ordering supplies/equipment
2. Monitoring and maintaining equipment
3. Maintaining a clean and safe environment
4. General housekeeping and admin duties

Working for our organisation

Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 11 million people.

We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities.

At the heart of all we do is our commitment to ‘perfect care’ – care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together. We’re currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Meeting Nutritional Needs

• To promote a pleasant environment for eating, i.e. remove any clutter from tables.
• Take responsibility for food stores, ensuring it is clean at all times, i.e. discard out of date food, stock rotation.
• To ensure temperature of ward fridge is monitored as per trust policy.
• To ensure food in fridge is labelled and stored correctly.
• To take responsibility for the staff fridge, i.e. discard out of date food.

Maintaining the Environment

• To establish a pleasant and welcoming atmosphere to patients, visitors and staff.
• To carry out monitoring of service and equipment.
• To establish delivery related to cleaning, food, linen and the environment, with particular attention to the bathrooms and toilets (at agreed intervals).
• To ensure all requirements for maintenance/repairs to equipment are reported in a timely manner to Estates.
• To monitor response times for maintenance and report any issues to the Team Manager.
• To maintain the cleanliness of all nursing equipment and trolleys.
• To liaise with staff following the discharge of a patient with regards to the cleaning of the bed/bedroom in preparation for a new admission.
• Check curtains/blinds are in good working order and rectify any faults.
• To ensure that all alcohol gel dispensers are cleaned and replenished.
• Monitor that correct waste management is being adhered to, especially confidential waste.
• Keep notice boards tidy and check that all posters/flyers are laminated and in date.
• Keep patient information boards and displays up to date and clean and tidy.

Clinical

• Work collaboratively within the Care team to ensure that service user’s needs are met.
• Recognise and respond appropriately to urgent and emergency situations.
• Report any concern regarding service user care to the Qualified Practitioner.
• Support an individual’s equality, diversity and rights.

General

• To ensure personal privacy, dignity and confidentiality is maintained at all times.
• To assist with bed making, where appropriate, ensuring an adequate supply of linen is available at all times.
• Liaise with domestic supervisor when deep cleaning is needed.
• Ensure any items of broken or severely soiled furniture are reported to the Team Manager and collection and disposal arranged.
• To receive and welcome visitors.
• To respond to telephone calls in a courteous manner.
• To receive and pass information to others, maintaining confidentiality.
• To ensure cost effective use of resources.
• To respond to patient concerns through communication with nursing staff.
• To promote effective communication with patients, colleagues, other professionals and visitors to the trust.
• Maintain a professional image at all times.

Person specification

Qualifications

• NVQ 2 or equivalent level of experience within a care setting.

Knowledge / Experience

• Ability to function effectively as a team member.
• Experience of working within an environment of service users with mental health problems.

Skills

• Ability to communicate in a variety of settings with patients of varying levels of understanding.
• Able to present factual information and refer questions to others where appropriate.
• Able to deal with sensitive issues with tact and diplomacy.
• Ability to develop effective interpersonal relationships with colleagues in the health care setting.
• Basic understanding of mental illness.
• Aware of role of stock rotation/monitoring.
• First Aid.
• CPR Training.

Please ensure you check the email account from which you apply for all correspondence. All information regarding your application will come from apps.trac.jobs not NHS Jobs.

Only those applicants who demonstrate clearly how they meet our person specification will be shortlisted for interview.

As a Disability Confident Employer, we offer a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants who consider themselves to be disabled who meet the minimum (essential) criteria for the role in the person specification. If you would like your application to be considered under the Trust’s guaranteed interview scheme you can indicate this in the personal information section of your online application form.

Should you require a reasonable adjustment to our recruitment process please email [e-mail] to ensure that measures can be put in place to support you.

We reserve the right to close any vacancy earlier than advertised in exceptional circumstances once we have received a high volume of applications.

The Trust expects all post holders who require an enhanced DBS for their role subscribe to the DBS Update Service. You will be required to enrol for this service for a fee of £13 per year and maintain registration.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

The postholder will have access to vulnerable people in the course of their normal duties and as such this post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions.

FULFIL YOUR POTENTIAL AND SPREAD YOUR WINGS WITH MERSEY CARE

At Mersey Care, our commitment to ‘perfect care’ lies at the heart of everything we do, a person-centred care that starts with you. It’s a pledge to create an environment and staff support that will enable you to do the best job you can possibly do, to be the best you can possibly be.

You’ll be joining one of the most innovative and progressive NHS trusts in the country. One that offers specialist inpatient and community services to support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. We are the founding member of the Zero Suicide Alliance, and one of only three Trusts in the country which delivers high secure mental health care.

You’ll be made to feel at home, joining an almost 11,000-strong Mersey Care family comprising doctors, nurses, clinical staff, as well as countless other roles from dieticians to dentists, from data analysts to physiotherapists. You'll find a full list of our roles in our A-Z list.

You’ll have a home in the North West of England where your work/life balance is respected and working from sites easily commutable from Liverpool, Manchester, North Wales and Cheshire with many roles operating a hybrid working system.

Meet one of our nurses, Yohan, who came from London because Mersey Care is “the place to be”.

Join him in our secure and specialist learning disability division, or see our wider services in the region.