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Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust; Sheerness; On-site; GBP 32,000 - 42,000; Full time

Job summary

Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust seeks a registered mental health nurse to join the Early Days in Custody (EDiC) Team at HMP Elmley. This role focuses on stabilising health needs during the initial custody period and coordinating care with multidisciplinary colleagues.

You will carry out comprehensive assessments, write care plans with patients, and support safety, suicide risk and substance misuse interventions, while ensuring information sharing with consent.

Responsibilities

• Support new prisoners during their first 14 days to access healthcare and maintain general health.
• Identify wider needs through comprehensive assessment and co-produce a care plan.
• Cover some work for the mental health in-reach team, gather clinical history to ensure safety and continuity.
• Ensure ongoing care with clear pathway management understood by patient and families.
• Share information with consent to ensure care plans and risks are understood by staff, including HMPPS.
• Address waiting times, assessments, and interventions to meet service targets.
• Collaborate with other specialist services to ensure integrated care and liaison.
• Provide brief interventions for substance misuse and mental wellbeing.

Job description

Early Days in Custody (EDiC) Practitioner | Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust

Company:

Company: Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust

We have an exciting opportunity for a registered mental health nurse to join our Early Days in Custody Team (EDiC) at HMP Elmley.

The EDiC team will act with the following principles:

Holistic – the EDiC team is multi-disciplinary, drawing on expertise from the other teams within healthcare to provide a knowledgeable and skilled service with the ability to draw upon specialist input rapidly when needed.

Curious – the EDiC team will engage with patients with clinical curiosity – drawing on all the information available to them to understand patient needs. The team will engage where possible with patients’ families/carers to fully understand patient’s needs and assist in helping maintain family relationships.

Prioritising Safety - Keep prisoners safe by identifying and addressing immediate risks for that patient including self-harm, risk of death by suicide, and unmanaged substance misuse dependencies.

Important Sponsorship Information for this post: We are currently unable to offer a certificate of sponsorship for this post.

As a EDiC Practitioner you will:

• Ensure that new prisoners are supported during their first 14 days in the prison to access relevant healthcare offers and manage their general health and wellbeing whilst in prison.
• Identify the wider needs of patients, through the completion of a comprehensive assessment and working in partnership with them to co-produce a written care plan that addresses their health and social care needs.
• The role will include covering some work for the mental health in-reach team. For example:
• Collect and synthesize all relevant clinical history to ensure safety, continuity of care and minimal re-assessments for the patient and ensuring that the records held for patients are up to date and accurate.
• Ensure ongoing care for every person requiring it, with clear pathway management in place that is understood by the patient and their families /significant others.
• Information is shared where appropriate and consent has been given to ensure that care plans and risks for patients are widely understood by all staff supporting them, including HMPPS staff where appropriate. This will be done with full patient consent.

Oxleas offers a wide range of NHS healthcare services to people in community and secure environment settings. Our services include community health care such as district nursing and speech and language therapy, care for people with learning disabilities and mental health care such as psychiatry, nursing and therapies. Our multidisciplinary teams look after people of all ages and we work in close partnership with other parts of the NHS, local councils and the voluntary sector and through our new provider collaboratives. Our 4,300 members of staff work in many different settings including hospitals, clinics, prisons, secure hospitals, children’s centres, schools and people’s homes.

We have over 125 sites in a variety of locations in the South of England. In London we operate within the Boroughs of Bexley, Bromley Greenwich and into Kent. We manage hospital sites including Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup and Memorial Hospital, Woolwich, as well as the Bracton Centre, our medium secure unit for people with mental health needs. We are the largest NHS provider of prison health services providing healthcare to prisons within Devon, Dorset, Bristol, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, Kent and South London. We are proud of the care we provide and our people.

Our purpose is to improve lives by providing the best possible care to our patients and their families. This is strengthened by our new values:

• The post holder will be responsible to take part in reception screening for new prisoners on the day of first entry into prison. This will identify immediate health, risks, and safety needs.
• To be able to develop initial mental health crisis plans for patients who are presenting as particularly at risk of a mental health crisis.
• The post holder will be responsible for carrying out comprehensive health and social care assessment (secondary screening) within seven days for all prisoners who are willing to undertake this assessment.
• For people that decline this assessment the team will ensure a care plan is in place for any known risks and vulnerabilities and will proactively work with the person to undertake a secondary screen at a later stage.
• The post holder will lead on identifying patients whose needs, risks or circumstances have changed following a return from court or hospital outside of the reception process.
• The development of a care plan that is individualised, responding clearly to each identified health need with patient input and coproduction where feasible and that ensures the wellbeing and safety of that patient for their first 14 days in custody.
• The ability to collate healthcare information from families, community providers or prior establishments to improve continuity of care and safety, and limit reassessments.
• Ensure that all waiting time, assessment and interventions are delivered in a timely manner, and positively contribute to the achievement of the service’s performance targets.
• Ensure integrated and collaborative working with other specialist services, including continuity of care and through the gate arrangements and liaison.
• Short-term care coordination to ensure referrals are made, GP appointments are attended, assessments actioned, and issues identified at the reception screening or health assessment are addressed.
• To be able to provide brief interventions for substance misuse and mental wellbeing (i.e., sleep hygiene advice, breathing techniques for anxiety management etc.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION, PLEASE READ:

All applicants must be willing to undertake National Security Vetting in order to work in a Prison Setting. This will be completed as part of the pre-employment checks through Oxleas and the prison vetting team.

You will need to provide:

• Proof of right to work documentation
• Proof of ID, needs to include 1 photographic ID
• Proof of address documentation
• Non-UK passport holders will need to have correct documentation (right to work in the UK) and a Home office Share code.

Address History:

5 years address history will be needed.

Applicants that are not UK Passport holders who provide less than 5 years UK address history will need to provide a Police Certificate which must be in English from where they resided previously.

Applicants who are UK Passport holders who have lived abroad for a period of more than six months during the last three years will need to provide a certificate of good conduct or an overseas police check in English from the countries resided in or visited.

In order to assist you in obtaining a Police Certificate, guidance can be sought from:https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/criminal-records-checks-for-overseas-applicants

If the country you have resided in is not listed here, you can obtain the necessary information by contacting the relevant Embassy or High Commission for that Country. Their contact details can be found on the Foreign & Commonwealth Office website (http://www.fco.gov.uk/en).

This advert closes on Tuesday 22 Sep 2026