Joining #TeamNELFT means you’ll become part of a welcoming and supportive working environment. We’re CQC rated Good, and we want you to join us on the journey towards an Outstanding rating. NELFT has sites across North East London, Essex, Kent and Medway. We provide community and mental healthcare services to adults and children within these areas.

The Trust has award winning equality and diversity initiatives and staff health and wellbeing activities. We invest heavily in your development, because when you are valued and supported, we provide the best care to our patients. We are a Level 3 Disability Confident Leader, have been featured in the Working Families Top 10 Employers benchmark for three consecutive years, and we have achieved a Carers UK Level 1 Accreditation. Along with our staff networks and training opportunities, we work hard to embed a just and compassionate culture here at NELFT.

Find out more about NELFT careers and what makes our Trust a great place to work, in this video

Job overview

We are a telephone triage service who identifies a young person's emotional wellbeing and mental health needs to direct them to the most appropriate support service. We listen and advise families and other professionals with evidence-based advice and information.

We are looking for experienced clinicians who are passionate about young people's mental health. You will have experience and knowledge in working with children and young people, an understanding of mental illness, child development and treatment pathways.

You will have a core profession; Registered Mental Health Nurse, Social Worker or other Allied Health Professional.

Main duties of the job

The primary roles of the post are:
Screening new email referrals, ensuring they are complete with enough information to determine if the referral will be processed onto the caseload or if the referral is more suited to targeted counselling/intervention services.
As a clinician you will tele-triage accepted referrals. The triage will highlight the primary needs and then signposting of the referral to either NELFT CYPMHs, appropriate local stakeholders offering targeted support or to other agencies, if and when appropriate.
We operate the NHS 111 mental health line for Children & Young People in Kent & Medway, as a clinician, you will take crisis calls when escalated by our call handlers. You will offer a tele-triage and risk assess the current needs and make onward referrals.

Working for our organisation

Probationary Period

This post will be subject to a probationary period. Internal applicants are exempt from the probationary period (unless you are an internal applicant currently part way through a probationary period or currently a bank member of staff).

Starting with NELFT

NELFT place a great deal of importance on new starters being properly welcomed and inducted into the Trust. All new starters will join the Trust on the first Monday of each month and will undertake a comprehensive induction of up to two weeks which will include mandatory training, systems training and the allocation of equipment. As part of the process new starters will have the opportunity to also meet the executive team, senior managers and attend a number of drop in sessions focusing in engagement, health and wellbeing and key processes. The induction will be held at our head office in Rainham, Essex.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The Single Point of Access operates between 08:00 and 18:00 Monday-Friday

The Single Point of Access is based in Maidstone, easily accessible by car and offers a range of facilities including a restaurant and ample safe parking.

We value team involvement in service improvement and your professional development.

The post-holder will be a graduate qualified health care professional ( nurse, social worker, occupational therapist), or will have substantial CAMHS clinical experience and where appropriate will be fully registered with the appropriate professional or regulatory body ( HCPC, NMC). They will have extensive clinical experience working with children and young people with emotional wellbeing and mental health difficulties. In addition, they will need to evidence that they are able to provide children, young people and their families with information and education thereby ensuring they have meaningful choices regarding interventions. They will need to demonstrate that they have a wide range of knowledge in approaches to communicating and managing care.

The SPA receives, screens and directs referrals from across Kent and Medway Then provides advice, information, consultation and support to all referrers and a range of other local services. 

The SPA works closely with the CYPMHS locality teams and aims to respond earlier to children and young people’s needs in order to help prevent, reduce or delay the need for more specialist interventions.

The service is driven by the principles underpinning the national CYP-IAPT programme (Children and Young People’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies); evidence-based interventions, routine measurement of outcomes, access to high quality training and supervision for professionals and true co-production with children and young people.

Care pathway leads and practitioners ensure that a high quality, timely, accessible and evidence-based service is available to all children and young people who need it. This means establishing and maintaining excellent working relationships with the SPA, wider social, health and voluntary services.

The Single Point of Access receives referrals for children and young people, with emotional wellbeing and mental health difficulties, but has since expanded to include referrals for ADHD, ASC and Learning Disability. The referrals we receive are for a broad range of challenges, and the post holder will be able to develop knowledge and skills in the areas of mental health, neurodevelopment and crisis response.

If you are an overseas qualified nurse and wanting to start your journey to becoming a UK based registered nurse with the NMC, you can check whether you are eligible to be supported through our Capital Nurse consortium. Please visit; . Whilst NELFT is happy to welcome overseas nurses we are unable to consider your application directly. You should submit your interest and apply through the Capital Nurse London group.

Although we are a registered sponsor organisation, we are unable to offer sponsorship for some job roles, and this will be identified through filtering questions at the start of any job application on the Trac recruitment system.

Use of AI

Applications for this role should be written by the applicant. If artificial intelligence (AI) programmes are used then the application may be rejected due to this document being an important part of the assessment process. This does not prevent applicants seeking appropriate support with applications should they need to for the purposes of any declared disability.

Person specification

Skills

Essential criteria

Competent of IT and IT skills •High level communication skills •The ability to consider they young person systemically

Desirable criteria

Ability to work effectively as a team member

Qualifications

Essential criteria

Core qualification; RMN or AHP Must be registered with a professional body

Desirable criteria

Post qualification experience

Skills

Essential criteria

Skills in mental health assessment Communication skills

Desirable criteria

Liaison experience Previous call handler experience

Experience

Essential criteria

•Experience of working with difficult, disturbed or challenging children/young people requiring skilled and complex interventions •Experience of working with children and adolescents with co-morbid difficulties and special needs. ( combination of organic and emotional deficits, such as autistic spectrum disorders and trauma). •Experience of working therapeutically with parents/carers/families of children and young people with complex mental health problems •Experience of using observation (eg. In school contexts) to contribute to assessments of children. •Experience of carrying out generic assessment with other colleagues in the multi-disciplinary team •Experience of assessment carried out autonomously in order to determine the most appropriate treatment plan from a range of options for the child/young person.

Desirable criteria

•Extended specialist training •Practiced in managing difficult conversations •Experience of change management

Knowledge

Essential criteria

•An awareness of NHS Plan, NSF and clinical governance priorities •Knowledge of child and adolescent mental health and mental health disorders •Knowledge in identifying safeguarding concerns and how to address concerns

Desirable criteria

•Knowledge of child development and development disorders

Benefits

We believe in bringing your authentic and best self to work, in order to deliver the best care to our patients. We are committed to supporting our employees holistically. Here is a snapshot of what is on offer at NELFT:

A long-standing and award-winning approach to equality and diversity with supportive networks for ethnic minority staff, staff with disabilities or long term/chronic conditions and LGBT staff. A commitment to supporting colleagues to achieve a work life balance, through flexible working opportunities and our effortsto support our working parents and carers. This has resulted in us being recognised as a ‘Top 10 Family Friendly Employer’ from the Working Families Charity. Proactive health and wellbeing support, including access to our employee assistance programme, staff psychological support, individual wellbeing conversations and a network of health and wellbeing ambassadors. Detailed information about our wellbeing and benefits offer can be found in this link.

As a flexible working friendly organisation, we want to be sure that you can work in a way that is best for us and for our patients, and for you. Speak to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement whether that’s a job share, part time hours or another flexible pattern.