Closing date: 15 November 2026
Salary: £39,959 to £48,117 a year per annum
Band: Band 6 (Agenda for change)
Working pattern: Full-time
Contract: Permanent
Location: Harry Blackman House, Peasley Cross Hospital Site, St Helens, WA9 3DE

Job summary
We are seeking to recruit a full time Senior Mental Health Practitioner to join our Later Life and Memory Service in St Helens. We are a forward thinking, friendly and busy team aiming for high quality service provision to older adults in our area. You would join a busy, well established team who are supportive and welcoming. The job itself can be challenging but rewarding and provides job satisfaction.

We would like you to have some demonstrable experience of working within mental health setting and / or with adults with a dementia diagnosis and be keen to develop your professional skills in this clinical area.

The role will involve supporting with assessments of older adults in our care, medication reviews and liaison/support to carers. There will be an expectation that the SNP would be able to develop positive working relationships with the wider care network.

We would encourage applicants who have a professional registration as a mental health nurse to apply.

Encouragement is given should you wish to discuss this vacancy further.

Main duties of the job
The Older adults mental health hub (LLAMS) supports individuals who have are undergoing assessment and have established diagnosis of cognitive impairment/dementia. The team is a busy and skilled multi-disciplinary group which actively promotes close partnership working within the wider community.

If you feel you possess the values of Mersey Care NHS Trust we would welcome an application from you. Applicants should hold the professional qualification of a Registered Mental Health Nurse and have a passion for working in this field.

You will have excellent interpersonal skills that will enable you to support service users and their families and challenge, motivate, influence and inspire your colleagues at all levels.

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 will be based within the LLAMS team and will:

• Provide assessments/reviews and develop treatment plans for service users on caseload
• Act as named professional/key worker and coordinate care between services
• Hold a caseload of people with a dementia diagnosis or older adult mental health needs.
• Participate in team meetings, MDT meetings and training opportunities
• Provide advice and support for service users and carers
• Support of student nurses in the team
• Liaise with colleagues and coordinate care for service users on caseload
• Support and monitor the service user whilst commencing medication
• Work collaboratively with other members of the MDT
• Be part of the duty team rota and triage referrals appropriately.
• Attend regular supervision and team meetings
• Participate in training opportunities
• Support people with complex needs and provide advice and guidance as peoples needs change
• Monitor medication

Qualifications

• Essential: Appropriate professional qualification (e.g. RMN, AHP, Social Worker)
• Essential: Evidence of post registration CPD
• Desirable: Working towards Masters level education

Experience

• Essential: Minimum 2 years post registration mental health experience
• Essential: Evidence of leadership and management skills
• Essential: Evidence of experience of managing cases & case loads
• Essential: Evidence of supervising staff
• Essential: Ability to work autonomously across the organisation/boundaries and with other agencies
• Essential: Experience of working in partnership with other agencies and service users and carers
• Essential: Experience of audit/research and working knowledge of clinical governance
• Essential: Experience in change management and policy formulation
• Essential: Experience of using Incident Reporting Systems e.g. RADAR
• Essential: Experience of undertaking and involvement in Serious Untoward Incident Reviews
• Essential: 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
• Essential: Proven knowledge of relevant mental health legislation
• Essential: Demonstrate knowledge in the concepts of mentorship, preceptorship and supervision and ability to provide education and supervision to junior staff
• Essential: Demonstrate a good knowledge of professional Codes of Conduct and Staffs' responsibility to identify gaps in their knowledge base

Skills

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

Apply through our website
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.