This role involves providing evidenced based treatment to patients in the community who are experiencing serious mental illness or disorder. Most of this will be individual work with patients (and their carers) although there are opportunities to take part in therapeutic group work or joint work with other professions.
We usually recruit staff with previous community mental health experience, but we are happy to consider staff whose career so far has been ward based. Enthusiasm and a desire to help people live their best lives are the key qualities we are looking for, and we are used to providing comprehensive supervision and support to our staff.
We strongly encourage personal and professional development – and once you are established within the team, there would be opportunities to undertake MBT, DBT, SCM training, Understanding psychosis and bipolar training, and Motivational Interview training.
If you are interested in joining the team and are keen to progress in your development, please do get in touch - we really encourage you to contact us for an informal chat, visit and/or a shadow shift with us – and submit an application form!
This role is focussed on providing appropriate, effective interventions and treatments to people with severe and enduring mental health needs, and their carers (including friends and relatives) and their supporters in the community.
The role will require for you to assist service users with meeting their daily health, social care and well being needs, in line with personal recovery goals, and facilitating engagement with mainstream services.
The post holder will also provide clinical leadership and supervision to team members.
Always under the overarching framework of CPA, the post holder will be responsible for the ongoing assessment, planning delivery and review of activities and interventions against identified health, social care and well being needs, acting as care coordinator for a defined group of service users.
You will be required to undertake tasks such as delivering specific health or social care assessments and interventions, according to care clusters, including identified service users on other caseloads. This maybe either on a one to one basis, or as part of a group activity.
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.
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.
To undertake the full range of activities required to deliver ongoing comprehensive mental health assessment for service users with severe and enduring mental health needs living in the community and in a range of settings. This will include:
a. The use of standardised assessment tools, i.e. the Cluster Allocation Support Tool (CAST), KGV.
b. Recovery Star.
c. History, strengths and aspirations.
d. Mental state.
e. Impact of culture and diversity.
f. Functional needs.
g. The needs of family and carer.
h. Evaluation of risk.
i. Physical health.
j. Complicating factors.
k. The interventions and treatments required to enable positive change.
l. Social care needs.
m. Safeguarding and public protection.
n. Capacity under the Mental Capacity Act.
To be responsible for developing delivering and reviewing comprehensive and complex treatment programmes using appropriate frameworks in line with evidence–based practice, including strategies to manage risk for service users with complex needs and carers, bringing in other resources as required.
To act as care coordinator for service users with the most complex needs, also providing defined interventions to individuals on other workers caseloads.
To plan, deliver and evaluate defined, specialist therapeutic interventions as indicated in the assessment process ,in line with personal recovery plans, including to service users who maybe on other caseloads. This might include:
a. Individual or group therapeutic intervention.
b. Psychological treatments such as CBT, DBT approaches , family interventions.
c. Psychosocial interventions.
d. Motivational and coping enhancement strategies.
e. Medication management.
f. Interventions under the Mental Health Act.
To deliver a range of defined activities/interventions to improve the carers‘ ability to support the service user and to enable them in their relationship with the service user.
In collaboration with service users and carers, to be responsible for facilitating the development of complex comprehensive crisis plans, rapid access plans, advance statements etc, involving other agencies such as primary care etc where appropriate.
To be responsible for maintaining own workload, as well as planning the workload of others, on a day to day basis, ensuring that time is prioritised effectively, utilising of electronic resources such as diaries/scheduling.
To be responsible for the protection of individuals from abuse and harm in line with local safeguarding policies and procedures, including working with others in the planning development and review of protection plans, ensuring the appropriate sharing of information.
Coordinating and undertaking protective interventions which maybe required in the protection of others, as outlined in the protection plan, taking individual action where indicated.
Undertake active clinical leadership and supervision within the team, covering for the manager and colleagues as required.
To maintain the single health and social care record, ensuring both paper and electronic records are kept up to date in accordance with professional and organisational standards.
Report and record within agreed timeframes, all activity relating to information reporting and performance requirements.
To participate in management, caseload and clinical supervision in accordance with trust policy.
To provide mentoring/training for others in relevant practice areas, according to professional requirements, taking a collaborative approach to practice development and evidence-based care. Specifically this means providing a safe and effective learning environment for the mentoring and supervising of students , participating in their learning objectives and assessments
This post is open to newly qualified social workers. In line with trust policy all newly qualified social workers will be recruited initially at Band 5 level, regardless of advertised role banding. All NQSWs are expected to successfully complete their ASYE within 2 years of employment, unless there are exceptional circumstances in which case it may be agreed to extend this for a further 2 years.
On successful completion of the ASYE, for which you will be given full support of an experienced Social Worker as well as Divisional Social Work Lead, and peer support from other ASYE candidates, you will then be eligible to progress to a Band 6 position.
If you have been appointed to an advertised Band 6 role this will be an automatic progression, following confirmation of your successful completion. If you have been appointed to a Band 5 you will then be eligible to apply for a subsequent Band 6 vacancy

Please refer the Job description for details