Patient and Family Liaison Officer

at  Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

The Family Liaison Officer will be required to provide support, advice and signposting to families, carers and or significant others following a patient safety incident that affects any person who is in receipt of care or treatment by Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust or was recently in receipt of care and treatment.
The Family Liaison Officer will be a passionate and motivated professional who has a strong desire to make a difference for families who have experienced a patient safety incident.
You will need to be compassionate and empathic, responsive, and understanding with a willingness to help grow and shape the Trust vision for supporting families and be able to empower people with lived experience to contribute to the development of standards that will make a difference.

You will need a high level of self-awareness and an ability to prioritise your own self-care alongside balancing the needs of others and the demands of the role.

• Be responsible for providing support to individuals, some of whom will be deeply distressed. The post holder will need to be self-aware, compassionate, and actively seek to address self-care.
• Be the lead for supporting care groups and staff who have bereavement link roles to ensure that bereaved families and carers are engaged and supported advising staff on due process regards raising questions and sharing any concerns they may have in relation to the quality of care received by their family member.
• Be the lead in supporting care groups in ensuring families and carers are referred for and guided to receive a high standard of bereavement support or other individualised support which respects confidentiality, values, culture, and beliefs. This includes the promotion of and close working across the region with specialist bereavement services and other specialist services.
• Be responsible for linking Trust investigations or legal services and families together where a learning response is being undertaken or when a serious complaint has been made following the death or harm of a patient. The Patient and Family Liaison Officer will provide clear and accurate information about the Trust learning response process.

NHFT is an integrated primary care and mental health Trust, providing physical, mental health and specialty services in both hospital settings and out in the community. Because we put the person at the centre of all we do, we focus on delivering care that is as easy to access as possible. This means many of our services can be provided at home, work or in schools. We also provide health services to various prisons and detention centres in Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire.
NHFT promotes a culture of learning to improve the care and safety of our patients and staff, which focuses on people who enable our Trust to be ‘outstanding’ by supporting opportunity, innovation, development and growth.

This is a busy role where the main duties will include (but not limited to):

• Ensuring that families, carers, and significant others are supported and guided through the process of incident investigations, ensuring timely contact and information sharing including signposting to sources of help and support following a bereavement/incident where indicated.
• Leading on the development of team standards for post-incident support, empowering individuals with lived experience of loss, harm or bereavement following a patient safety incident.
• Using positive family engagement within the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) and transform the experience of patients and families who experience harm because of a patient safety incident within NHS care.
• Supporting the incident review process and wider functions of the Patient Safety Team as/when required.

For further information on the advertised role, please refer to the job description located under the Supporting Documents heading. The full person specification can be accessed under the ‘About You’ Section of the document

You will need a high level of self-awareness and an ability to prioritise your own self-care alongside balancing the needs of others and the demands of the role.

• Be responsible for providing support to individuals, some of whom will be deeply distressed. The post holder will need to be self-aware, compassionate, and actively seek to address self-care.
• Be the lead for supporting care groups and staff who have bereavement link roles to ensure that bereaved families and carers are engaged and supported advising staff on due process regards raising questions and sharing any concerns they may have in relation to the quality of care received by their family member.
• Be the lead in supporting care groups in ensuring families and carers are referred for and guided to receive a high standard of bereavement support or other individualised support which respects confidentiality, values, culture, and beliefs. This includes the promotion of and close working across the region with specialist bereavement services and other specialist services.
• Be responsible for linking Trust investigations or legal services and families together where a learning response is being undertaken or when a serious complaint has been made following the death or harm of a patient. The Patient and Family Liaison Officer will provide clear and accurate information about the Trust learning response process

This is a busy role where the main duties will include (but not limited to):

• Ensuring that families, carers, and significant others are supported and guided through the process of incident investigations, ensuring timely contact and information sharing including signposting to sources of help and support following a bereavement/incident where indicated.
• Leading on the development of team standards for post-incident support, empowering individuals with lived experience of loss, harm or bereavement following a patient safety incident.
• Using positive family engagement within the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) and transform the experience of patients and families who experience harm because of a patient safety incident within NHS care.
• Supporting the incident review process and wider functions of the Patient Safety Team as/when required