Job summary
The First Response Service is looking to recruit a passionate, experienced Senior Nurse Practitioner to join the team in the North First Response Service.

This is a demanding and challenging role where, as a successful candidate you will undertake triage and assessments for people who present in Mental health crisis. You will be required to demonstrate high levels of resilience, excellent problem solving and inter-personal skills as well as the ability to provide sound clinical and managerial advice and support to team members.

The post holder will also demonstrate a passion for quality improvement and an attitude which respects and values service users' choice and works alongside them and their carers to ensure they are at the centre of care planning.

Main duties of the job
The post holder will be competent in mental health assessment and identifying and managing risk.

Professional responsibility for the Community Mental Health Team and in the setting and adhering to the overall standards, which will include assessment of need and delivery of care within the context of Effective Care Coordination.

The post holder will demonstrate an attitude which respects and values service users' and their carers.

The post holder will embrace the core values of the organisation and adopt the principles of Recovery.

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.

Pay scheme: Agenda for change
Band: Band 6
Salary: £39,959 to £48,117 a year Per Annum
Contract: Permanent
Working pattern: Full-time
Reference number: 350-MHC8339375
Closing date: 22 October 2026

Job responsibilities
Main duties and responsibilities

• To coordinate the care of service users; carrying out assessments, evaluation and safety planning under the supervision of the clinical leads.
• To ensure that the service users care plan is developed to meet the assessed need of the individual and that unqualified staff are delivering care as identified in the care plan.
• To liaise with family members, carers and significant others when completing the assessment and developing a care plan.
• To undertake and supervise risk assessments and formulation of risk management plan for service users under your care, taking note of the contributions from other members of the team, family members carers and significant others.
• To ensure Safeguarding Children and Adults requirements are followed and participate in meetings as appropriate.
• To support unqualified staff to ensure delivery of a high standard of care to service users.
• To participate in setting standards for care based on sound evidence based and research findings.
• To communicate to other members of the multi-disciplinary team information which has an impact on the service users care.
• To use verbal and non-verbal communication skills gained through training or experience to impart sensitive information.
• To check understanding of information where there are barriers to effective communications.
• To give and receive accurate up-to-date information regarding service users care in reviews and multi-disciplinary meetings etc. These reviews may be external to the trust.
• To have accurate and up-to-date knowledge of the Mental Health Act / Mental Capacity Act and other relevant legislation.
• To ensure that all relevant information with regards to a service users care and treatment is documented accurately and legibly into the health record. To supervise and monitor the entries made by unqualified staff.
• To ensure that all incidents or near misses are documented as per trust policy and that any follow up action is taken.
• To react pro-actively in cases of service user crisis and put in place immediate plans to resolve the situation with supervision and guidance as appropriate.
• To actively participate in team meetings, development and reflective practice.

Professional duties and responsibilities

• To be responsible for maintaining relevant professional registration and PREP requirements.
• To participate in ongoing learning to maintain and develop practice utilising CPD, self directed learning reflective practice coaching mentorship clinical supervision and performance management in the interests and needs of yourself and the service.
• To provide an effective link between mental health services and primary care, acting in an advisory capacity to professionals in other fields.
• To develop effective working relationships with other professional outside of the Trust to enhance the delivery of care to service users.
• To participate as a supervisor and supervisee in the Divisional performance management / supervision framework.
• To take responsibility for maintaining and developing own knowledge and skills within own area of work.
• To attend, as appropriate, courses and conferences, and to feedback and share knowledge, gained from attendance.
• To be professionally accountable for own actions as a registered practitioner.
• To act, always, in accordance with trust policies and procedures, ensuring that unqualified staff are adhering to policy and procedure.
• To undertake mandatory training as identified by the Trust and Division to ensure that all actions are in line with training.
• To keep up to date with developments in professional practice and make recommendations for change to senior staff, as appropriate.

Organisational

• To adhere to the Trusts right based approach considering service user choice.
• To take reasonable care for the health and safety of yourself and any others that may be affected by your acts and omissions at work.
• To ensure that familiarity with the terms and conditions of own post.
• To take responsibility for identifying, reporting and managing environmental risk as necessary e.g. liaison with facilities.
• To participate in service development as required.

Other

• To maintain service user confidentiality in line with Caldecott Guidance both on and off duty.
• To ensure that work is conducted in accordance with the Trusts Equality and diversity Strategy in a Human Rights approach and to contribute to its development.
• To always maintain appropriate professional boundaries with service users both on and off duty.
• To co-operate with reasonable requests from senior staff to vary your area of work to meet unplanned clinical need.
• In exceptional circumstances to co-operate with reasonable requests from more senior staff to vary your area of work to meet unplanned clinical need.

Person Specification
Experience (Essential)

• Minimum of 2 years post registration experience in mental health.
• Evidence of leadership and management skills.
• Evidence of experience of managing cases and case loads.
• Evidence of supervising staff.
• Ability to work autonomously across the organisation/boundaries and with other agencies.
• Experience of working in partnership with other agencies and service users and carers.
• Experience of audit/research and working knowledge of clinical governance.
• Experience in change management and policy formulation.
• Experience of using Incident Reporting Systems e.g. DATIX.
• Experience of undertaking and involvement in Serious Untoward Incident Reviews.
• Evidence of experience of working with a range of people with mental health problems in a variety of health care settings.

Knowledge (Essential)

• Knowledge of mental health legislation, CPA, safeguarding, equality and human rights, clinical governance and professional codes of conduct.
• Proven knowledge of relevant mental health legislation.
• Demonstrate knowledge in the concepts of mentorship, preceptorship and supervision and ability to provide education and supervision to junior staff.
• Demonstrate a good knowledge of professional Codes of Conduct and Staff responsibility to identify gaps in their knowledge base.

Qualifications

• Essential: Appropriate professional qualification or experience at Degree Level e.g. RMN, AHP, Social Worker.
• Essential: Evidence of post-registration CPD.
• Desirable: Working towards master level education.

Skills (Essential)

• Able to communicate effectively both verbally and non-verbally.
• Being responsive and flexible, seeing change as an opportunity to improve services.
• Ability to lead the process of standard setting and audit.
• Professional attitude.
• Possess excellent listening and negotiation skills and leadership skills.
• Excellent oral and written skills.
• Excellent interpersonal and organisational skills.
• The ability to lead change management.
• Ability to contribute to developing care excellence within the ward / team area.
• Ability to work within a divisional management team, be able to generate own workload and ability to work to strict deadlines.
• Risk assessment and management.
• Ability to build purposeful relationships with a range of both internal and external to the organisation.
• Autonomous practice.
• Leadership and supervision.
• Multidisciplinary working.

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.

Employer details
Employer name: Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust
Address: Clock View Hospital, Liverpool, L9 1EP, United Kingdom
Employer's website: https://www.merseycare.nhs.uk/

For questions about the job, contact:
Acting Clinical Team Manager, Genevieve Kerr, genevieve.kerr@merseycare.nhs.uk

Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust's privacy notice is available on request.