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Job overview

Do you bring passion and commitment to delivering high quality care? Do you understand the clinical and sensory needs of people with a Learning Disability and or Autism? If so this role will provide you with a rare and exciting career opportunity.

Avon and Wiltshire Partnership (AWP) are seeking to recruit an exceptional person to provide leadership to support delivery of our vision of excellence to people with a learning disability and autistic people in our specialist acute inpatient mental health services.

The South West region is transforming the end to end pathway of care, together we will work to support people to live their best lives in their local communities. The ambition is to deliver specialist, acute mental health care in a setting designed and staffed to meet the specialist environmental and clinical needs of people with a learning disability and/or autism where access to mainstream inpatient services cannot be achieved through implementation of reasonable adjustments.

The Kingfisher inpatient service will be a centre of excellence and has been carefully designed and developed with clinicians and people with lived experience. We expect to open in early 2026. You will be employed in AWP Specialised Services division and work as a core member of the project team until opening. You will be instrumental in the development, implementation and delivery of the clinical and operational model for the inpatient service.

Main duties of the job

To inspire, lead and evaluate a service of high quality, ensuring that people who have a Learning Disability and/or Autism are provided with an outstanding person-centred approach to care delivery that always considers their safety, privacy and dignity.

Working alongside the Matron you will be a figurehead of the service, making the best use of resources, and ensuring the care and treatment activities delivered are safe, effective, caring and responsive to the needs and preferences of service users and carers. The role integrates aspects of clinical management, employee support, clinical leadership and accountability.

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.

AWP is committed to support and create a positive research and evidence-based environment and culture, which can have a beneficial impact on everyone who works for the organisation and the care we provide to those who use our services.

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

• Lead and have operational responsibility for the clinical management of the inpatient service, ensuring mechanisms are in place to support, develop and monitor all aspects of performance.
• Facilitate a learning environment that coaches and trains others to develop advanced clinical skills e.g. specialist assessment, planning, and evaluation for individuals with a Learning Disability and/or Autism.
• Demonstrate enhanced competence in complex decision making, assessment and the management of clinical needs.
• Proactively monitor standards and lead innovative processes to improve quality and the operational management of the unit/service.
• Being an accountable, candid and responsible point of contact and facilitator for clinical quality, collaboratively responsible for reporting, presenting and acting upon improvement actions (in accordance with internal, Care Quality Commission, Local Authority or Integrated Care Board requirements).
• Ensuring the team works in accordance with organisational, regional and statutory guidelines, as well as best practice guidance as outlined in formal benchmarks or standards (e.g. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence etc.).
• Mentor and teach as required with specific responsibility for supporting the Band 6 (senior staff nurses) with the provision of leadership and clinical practice using a 'just culture', compassionate management and coaching approach as required to develop and maintain the skills required within a specialist environment.

Person specification

Education and Qualification

Essential criteria

• Registered Mental Health / Health and Social Care Professional (e.g. Registered Nurse, Occupational Therapist etc.)
• Certificated evidence of Continuing Professional Development (CPD)

Desirable criteria

• Basic life support
• Autism awareness
• Training around understanding of behaviour that challenges
• PBM & PBS Trained
• A post-registration clinical qualification (e.g. DipHE, MSc
• Qualification in Management and/or leadership (e.g. ILM, CMI or NHS Leadership Academy)

Experience and Knowledge

Essential criteria

• Substantial post-registration clinical practice, and experience of leading / supervising
• Experience of medication administration, and related monitoring, reporting and response activities
• Experience of providing care and treatment as part of a team
• Experience of coordinating and leading time-limited episodes of clinical activity (e.g. shifts, day duties, clinical delivery Programmes)
• Experience in the therapeutic engagement with, and management of, challenging behavior in a clinical context (e.g. patient agitation, self-injury, aggression, violence or high-attentional demand)
• Experience of leading or facilitating change and/or quality improvement projects or activities
• Good working knowledge of relevant statutory codes of conduct and practice relevant to your own professional body and that of other professionally registered team members (e.g. NMCs the Code, RCOT Standards and Ethics etc.)
• Good working knowledge of, and experience of using, a systematic care planning, management, delivery and evaluation model (e.g. the Care Program Approach)
• Significant demonstrable experience of leading teams in the effective delivery of care
• Experience of managing clinical team budgets to maximize resources creatively and effectively

Desirable criteria

• Experience of facilitating groups
• Experience of managing a large team
• Experience of organisational change, transformation or cultural development work
• Experience of working in a quality improvement role (e.g. CCG or Nursing and Quality)

Skills and Abilities

Essential criteria

• Ability to assess, plan, implement, and evaluate programmes of care and treatment, including the component activities and tasks within such programmes.
• Advanced organizational skills, and ability to record, store and report on accurate, relevant data.
• writing) a relevant, contemporary understanding of: a) The core care, treatment and recovery interventions provided by the team b) How each component/member of the multi-disciplinary team contributes to this activity c) How the inpatient clinical program 'fits' with service users' recovery journey and the wider service d) How to identify deficits in, or limitations of, the inpatient clinical program, and how to go about addressing these.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including coherent data presentation and reporting
• Ability to receive and deliver a high standard of clinical and management supervision, performance appraisal, mentorship and supportive people management.
• Ability to undertake the clinical activity (appropriate to own professional training / registration) undertaken by the inpatient team to provide credible clinical as well as operational oversight.

Desirable criteria

• Physical skills to manually handle patients and use appropriate lifting aids
• Undertake specific nursing/therapy skills.
• Delivering patient focused care.

Other Requirements

Essential criteria

• Driving license with access to a car
• Empathy with, and compassion for, all those who use AWP's services, their carers' and our staff who work so hard to support them.
• A motivated, proactive, solution-focused professional attitude - ability to see problems and limitations as challenges to be worked with and overcome.
• Recognition of the changing nature of the NHS clinical workforce, and the impact this has on the stability and health of clinical teams and their members - recognition of the corresponding need for increased pastoral support, strong career development focus and the importance of flexibility wherever possible.
• Driven to achieve & Self-motivated
• Good time management
• Passion to work with people

Desirable criteria

• Resilience to work in an environment that may be challenging but highly rewarding

We are proud to be fostering a diverse workforce that reflects our communities. A key commitment to this is improving staff representation from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities, those from the LGBTQ+ communities, people with 'lived-experience' of mental health conditions and people living with disabilities,- we are a 'Disability Confident Employer' offering a guaranteed interview to Disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria. 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.

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Employer certification / accreditation badges

Applicant requirements

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.

Application numbers

This vacancy may close early if it receives a high number of applications. Please complete and submit your application in good time to avoid disappointment.
Documents to download

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