Mental Health Practitioner

Transformation Unit; Liverpool; Hybrid; GBP 40,000 - 48,000; Full time

Job summary

The First Response Service at Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust in Liverpool is seeking a Senior Nurse Practitioner (Band 6) to triage and assess individuals in mental health crisis. You will provide clinical and managerial support to the team and contribute to service delivery within a 24/7 model.

You will need strong assessment, risk management and leadership skills, with a commitment to recovery-focused care and safeguarding.

Qualifications

• Minimum 2 years post-registration experience in mental health.
• Experience in leadership and management roles.
• Experience of managing cases and caseloads.
• Experience supervising staff.
• Ability to work autonomously across the organisation and with external agencies.
• Experience partnering with service users, carers and other agencies.
• Experience of audit, research and clinical governance.
• Experience in change management and policy formulation.
• Experience using incident reporting systems (e.g., DATIX).
• Experience in Serious Untoward Incident reviews.
• Evidence of working with people with a range of mental health problems.

Responsibilities

• Coordinate care of service users; carry out assessments, evaluation and safety planning.
• Ensure care plans meet assessed needs and staff deliver care per plan.
• Liaise with family members, carers and significant others in assessment and care planning.
• Undertake and supervise risk assessments and risk management planning.
• Ensure safeguarding requirements are followed and participate in meetings.
• Support unqualified staff to deliver high standards of care.
• Participate in setting care standards based on evidence and research.
• Communicate effectively with the MDT and share information impacting care.
• Maintain accurate and up-to-date health records and documentation.
• Attend team meetings, CPD activities and contribute to service development.

Skills

Leadership

Management

Risk assessment

Communication

Change management

Audit & governance

Multidisciplinary working

Education

Degree-level qualification in nursing or allied profession

Tools

DATIX

Job description

Main area First Response Service- Mental Health Services Grade Band 6 Contract Permanent Hours Full time - 37.5 hours per week (Shift work covering a 24/7 service) Job ref 350-MHC8339375

Employer Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust Employer type NHS Site Clock View Hospital Town Liverpool Salary £39,959 - £48,117 Per Annum Salary period Yearly Closing 22/10/2026 23:59

Band 6

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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 ethnically diverse, 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.

Using AI to support your application

AI can be a useful tool to support the preparation of your application. However, all information submitted must be accurate, truthful and reflect your own skills, experience and achievements. Applications should include personal examples demonstrating how you meet the person specification. Applications that appear mostly or fully generated by AI, without clear personal examples linked to the person specification, may be rejected.For tips and guidance, please refer to our applicant guidance.

Identity verification

Candidates attending interview will be required to provide original photographic identification where available. Where suitable photographic identification is not available, a photograph will be taken at interview for identity verification purposes. Successful candidates will also be required to complete digital identity and right to work checks via TrustID, including facial recognition and image matching technology, to verify their identity throughout the recruitment and onboarding process. Identity verification will also be undertaken on the first day of employment in line with NHS employment check requirements.

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Job overview

The First Response Service is looking to recruit a passionate, experienced Senior Nurse Practitioner to join the team in the North First Response Service.

This is a demanding and challenging role where, as a successful candidate you will undertake triage and assessments for people who present in Mental health crisis. You will be required to demonstrate high levels of resilience, excellent problem solving and inter-personal skills as well as the ability to provide sound clinical and managerial advice and support to team members.

The post holder will also demonstrate a passion for quality improvement and an attitude which respects and values service users’ choice and works alongside them and their carers to ensure they are at the centre of care planning.

Main duties of the job

The post holder will be competent in mental health assessment and identifying and managing risk.

Professional responsibility for the Community Mental Health Team and in the setting and adhering to the overall standards, which will include assessment of need and delivery of care within the context of Effective Care Coordination.

The post holder will demonstrate an attitude which respects and values service users’ and their carers.

The post holder will embrace the core values of the organisation and adopt the principles of Recovery.

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 1.4 million people across our region and are also commissioned for services that cover the North West, North Wales and the Midlands.

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.

Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

MAIN DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

To coordinate the care of service users; carrying out assessments, evaluation and safety planning under the supervision of the clinical leads.

To ensure that the service users care plan is developed to meet the assessed need of the individual and that unqualified staff are delivering care as identified in the care plan.

To liaise with family members, carers and significant others when completing the assessment and developing a care plan.

To undertake and supervise risk assessments and formulation of risk management plan for service users under your care, taking note of the contributions from other members of the team, family members carers and significant others.

To ensure Safeguarding Children and Adults requirements are followed and participate in meetings as appropriate.

To support unqualified staff to ensure delivery of a high standard of care to service users.

To participate in setting standards for care based on sound evidence based and research findings.

To communicate to other members of the multi-disciplinary team information which has an impact on the service user’s care.

To use verbal and non-verbal communication skills gained through training or experience to impart sensitive information.

To check understanding of information where there are barriers to effective communications.

To give and receive accurate up-to-date information regarding service users’ care in reviews and multi-disciplinary meetings etc. These reviews may be external to the trust.

To have accurate and up–to–date knowledge of the Mental Health Act / Mental Capacity Act and other relevant legislation.

To ensure that all relevant information with regards to a service users care and treatment is documented accurately and legibly into the health record. To supervise and monitor the entries made by unqualified staff.

To ensure that all incidents or near misses are documented as per trust policy and that any follow up action is taken.

To react pro-actively in cases of service user crisis and put in place immediate plans to resolve the situation with supervision and guidance as appropriate.

To actively participate in team meetings, development and reflective practice.

PROFESSIONAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

To be responsible for maintaining relevant professional registration and PREP requirements.

To participate in ongoing learning to maintain and develop practice utilising CPD, self directed learning reflective practice coaching mentorship clinical supervision and performance management in the interests and needs of yourself and the service.

To provide an effective link between mental health services and primary care, acting in an advisory capacity to professionals in other fields.

To develop effective working relationships with other professional outside of the Trust to enhance the delivery of care to service users.

To participate as a supervisor and supervisee in the Divisional performance management / supervision framework.

To take responsibility for maintaining and developing own knowledge and sills within own area of work.

To attend, as appropriate, courses and conferences, and to feedback and share knowledge, gained from attendance.

To be professionally accountable for own actions as a registered practitioner.

To act, always, in accordance with trust policies and procedures, ensuring that unqualified staff are adhering to policy and procedure.

To undertake mandatory training as identified by the Trust and Division to ensure that all actions are in line with training.

To keep up to date with developments in professional practice and make recommendations for change to senior staff, as appropriate.

ORGANISATIONAL

To adhere to the Trusts right based approach considering service user choice.

To take reasonable care for the health and safety of yourself and any others that may be affected by your acts and omissions at work.

To ensure that familiarity with the terms and conditions of own post.

To take responsibility for identifying, reporting and managing environmental risk as necessary e.g. liaison with facilities.

OTHER

To maintain service user confidentiality in line with Caldecott Guidance both on and off duty.

To ensure that work is conducted in accordance with the Trust’s Equality and diversity Strategy in a Human Rights approach and to contribute to its development.

To always maintain appropriate professional boundaries with service users both on and off duty.

To co-operate with reasonable requests from senior staff to vary your area of work to meet unplanned clinical need.

In exceptional circumstances to co-operate with reasonable requests from more senior staff to vary your area of work to meet unplanned clinical need.

Person specification

Experience

• Minimum of 2 years post registration experience in mental health.
• Evidence of leadership and management skills.
• Evidence of experience of managing cases & case loads
• Evidence of supervising staff.
• Ability to work autonomously across the organisation/boundaries and with other agencies
• Experience of working in partnership with other agencies and service users and carers
• Experience of audit/research and working knowledge of clinical governance.
• Experience in change management and policy formulation.
• Experience of using Incident Reporting Systems e.g. DATIX
• Experience of undertaking and involvement in Serious Untoward Incident Reviews
• Evidence of experience of working with a range of people with mental health problems in a variety of health care settings.

Knowledge

• Knowledge of mental health legislation, CPA, safeguarding, equality and human rights, clinical governance and professional codes of conduct
• Proven knowledge of relevant mental health legislation
• Demonstrate knowledge in the concepts of mentorship, preceptorship and supervision and ability to provide education and supervision to junior staff
• Demonstrate a good knowledge of professional Codes of Conduct and Staffs’ responsibility to identify gaps in their knowledge bas e

Qualifications

• Appropriate professional qualification or experience at Degree Level e.g. RMN, AHP, Social Worker
• Evidence of post-registration CPD
• Working towards master level education

Skills

• Able to communicate effectively both verbally and non -verbally
• Being responsive and flexible, seeing change as an opportunity to improve services
• Ability to lead the process of standard setting and audit
• Professional attitude
• Possess excellent listening and negotiation skills and leadership skills
• Excellent oral and written skills
• Excellent interpersonal and organisational skills
• The ability to lead change management
• Ability to contribute to developing care excellence within the ward / team area
• Ability to work within a divisional management team, be able to generate own workload and ability to work to strict deadlines
• Risk assessment and management
• Ability to build purposeful relationships with a range of both internal and external to the organisation
• Leadership and supervision
• Multidisciplinary working

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Employer certification / accreditation badges

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.