Job summary
The Mersey Care Homeless Health Team provides essential health services and support to vulnerable individuals experiencing homelessness in the St Helens area. The Homeless Health Team focuses on assisting individuals who are homeless, vulnerable housed and veterans. Their services include:

• Holistic Assessments: The team conducts thorough assessments to understand the health needs of clients, addressing both physical and mental issues.
• Healthcare Advice: They provide guidance on managing health problems and navigating the healthcare system.
• Ongoing Support: The team offers continuous support and follow-up care to ensure the clients received necessary services.
• Signposting and Referrals: They connect clients with other relevant services, such as housing support, mental health services, and addiction support.

The Homeless Health Team aims to support anyone experiencing health problems who is currently homeless or at risk of losing their home within the St Helens area. They collaborate with various professionals and organisations, including health and care professionals, housing charities and probation services to provide comprehensive support.

Main duties of the job

• Deliver and participate in the physical health clinical care of patients referred into the Homeless Health Team.
• To be professionally and legally accountable for all work undertaken to practice at an advanced level of professional autonomy and accountability that is within Trust policies and the Nursing and Midwifery Code of Conduct (2008) or the Health & Care Professions Council (HCPC).
• Provide a level of advanced and comprehensive physical health assessment based on a specialist body of knowledge.
• To appropriately assess, examine, investigate, diagnose and treat patients, resulting in the safe management and appropriate referral or discharge of patients.
• Is able to identify the need for appropriate diagnostic tests, interpret the results and act on any results requiring clinical intervention or management.
• To identify and intervene proactively where circumstances contribute to an unsafe environment for patients, staff or relatives and escalate these to the health and safety team/safeguarding team.
• Must have completed the Independent Non-Medical Prescribing course and registration with the NMC or HCPC, undertake non-medical prescribing in accordance with the Trust non-medical prescribing policy and maintain evidence and competence of this qualification.

About us
Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 1.4 million people across our region and are also commissioned for services that cover the North West, North Wales and the Midlands.

We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities.

At the heart of all we do is our commitment to 'perfect care' - care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together. We're currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so.

Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.

Job responsibilities
The post holder is required to deliver an advanced level of clinical practice within their recognised remit of physical health. Working within the local and nationally agreed frameworks the Advanced Clinical Practitioner (ACP), will exercise independent judgment to assess, investigate, diagnose, plan, implement and evaluate the clinical care and management of patients physical health within their care. The ACPs will provide the teams with advanced clinical leadership, having undergone training to meet all academic and core clinical requirements (4 pillars of advanced practice) relevant to the role.

The ACPs reporting lines will be via the Mental Health Care Division leadership structure. They will work alongside and support the education and development of trainee APs and the wider MDT within the Mental Health Care Division. The ACP will have key working relationships with all members of the nursing, medical and multidisciplinary teams, trust management teams and wider partners.

The Band 8a ACP practices in partnership with the multidisciplinary team.

Qualifications
Essential

• Registration with relevant clinical body
• Full Masters in advanced Clinical Practice physical health or qualification, such as relevant in-depth experience and postgraduate/registration study/qualification
• V300 Non-medical prescribing
• Mentor/teaching qualification

Knowledge/ Experience
Essential

• Working autonomously in an advanced physical health role
• Proven leadership skills
• Non-medical prescriber
• Research
• Audits

Desirable

• Community experience
• Working within a multi- disciplinary led environment

Skills
Essential

• Excellent communication skills both written and verbal
• Change management
• Able to work across boundaries within primary and offering support to secondary care
• Negotiation and conflict management skills
• IT literate

Desirable

• EMIS
• ICE
• RIO

Disclosure and Barring Service Check
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

UK Registration
Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Applicants must have current UK professional registration.