Mental Health Practitioner

Lancashire & South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust; Lancashire; On-site; GBP 30,000 - 40,000; Full time

Job summary

A regional healthcare provider is looking for a band 6 Mental Health Practitioner to join the Home Treatment Team in Lancaster. This role focuses on providing intensive support to individuals experiencing acute mental health issues, facilitating assessments, and ensuring effective communication with various healthcare professionals. The position is full-time and offers flexible working patterns to maintain a healthy work/life balance.

Benefits

Flexible working options

Support for work/life balance

Qualifications

• Experience in providing mental health triage services.
• Ability to collaborate with various healthcare professionals.
• Understanding of mental health pathways.

Responsibilities

• Provide comprehensive assessments and triage service.
• Facilitate onward referrals to mental health pathways.
• Collaborate with referrers such as police and hospitals.

Skills

Great communication skills

Assessment and triage

Job description

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a band 6 Mental Health Practitioner to work in the Home Treatment Team in Lancaster.

The Home Treatment Team cares for people who are experiencing acute episodes of mental illness or emotional distress. The service is an alternative to admission and offers intensive support to service users and their families in the community. The service works closely with the in‑patient wards to support early discharges and with other parts of the mental health services as well as third sector providers, so great communication skills are essential.

You will provide a comprehensive assessment and triage service and, where necessary, signposting or clear onward facilitation to a mental health pathway. Your referrers will mostly include IRS (initial response service), Police and Acute Hospital colleagues, trust‑employed mental health practitioners working in GP service. Service users will be triaged collaboratively and a decision will be made in consultation with the referrer and with the use of a clinical tool, within the response time required.

Lancashire & South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust provides a range of services including secondary mental health care across this area. Specialist provision comprises inpatient child and adolescent mental health services, perinatal mental health and forensic services including low and medium secure care.

The Trust also provides a range of physical health and well‑being services in the community alongside a range of partners in the Lancashire, Cumbria and Sefton area.

Lancashire & South Cumbria Foundation Trust encourages flexible working, we believe that a positive work/life balance benefits NHS employees through improved health and wellbeing. We would consider working patterns such as term time, part time, compressed hours, flexi‑time and career breaks. We encourage applicants to state clearly on their application forms this request and discuss these options at interview.

The post is a full‑time, permanent post covering the service over 7 days per week working long days and nights. The team covers Lancaster, Morecambe and surrounding areas.