Overview
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Mental Health Practitioner - Connection
The closing date is 24 September 2025
We are looking for experienced professionally registered Mental Health Nurses, Social Workers or Occupational Therapists with a genuine passion for supporting those in mental health crisis, to join the Connection team. We value all our team and offer a financial recruitment and retention premium on this post.
Connection is moving forward and this is an exciting time to join us for the next stages of our service development; increasing face to face community assessment work, and working collaboratively with partner agencies to ensure people in mental health crisis receive the right support, in the right place, at the right time.
Based at St Ann\'s Hospital, with a sea view from the office, Connection is Dorset's 24/7 open access mental health crisis service. Access Mental Health Dorset
This is a diverse role with new challenges each day: Direct clinical assessments, advice and support, supervise our fantastic mental health support workers, give clinical advice to other agencies and emergency services, co-ordinate urgent and emergency responses, and liaise with a range of internal and external services.
We are committed to professional development and support, offering internal and external training/education programmes and supervision.
Full and part time hours available. This is a 24/7 service with shift patterns including weekends, bank holidays and nights. All reasonable flexible working requests will be considered.
Main duties of the job
Telephone and face to face mental health assessments, brief clinical interventions and support, signposting and referrals.
Validating, de-escalating crisis and coaching people in distress tolerance and emotional regulation strategies. Using a range of brief interventions, you will empower patients, carers and families to manage distress and crisis effectively.
As well as telephone based work the role also include opportunity to complete urgent face to face assessments across Dorset when indicated.
Providing clinical information, advice and support to other professionals and emergency services. Supporting police and ambulance service in accessing most appropriate support for those presenting in mental health crisis.
The team is part of the Trust Access Mental Health services and works closely with a range of other teams and services, including Home Treatment teams, Liaison Psychiatry and the Retreats. Overnight, Connection covers the Home Treatment Team caseload and manages any referrals.
Supervising and supporting the Mental Health Support Workers within the team providing guidance and support.
About us
At Dorset HealthCare we\'re on a mission to empower people to make the most of their lives through our outstanding, joined-up healthcare services. We\'re a dynamic, forward-looking Trust, running 12 community hospitals, specialist inpatient facilities and a wide range of integrated community and mental health services for a population of almost 800,000 people.
We do things differently here - it\'s one of the reasons the CQC rated us \'outstanding\' in 2019. It\'s also why 95% of patients across our services say they have a good or very good experience of our services and 89% of staff feel they can really make a difference.
Our 7,000-strong workforce is at the heart of what we do and our success is a testament to our brilliant people. We\'re all about building a workplace for the future, we believe in equal opportunities and we celebrate diversity. We\'re an inclusive workplace, where everyone is welcome, everyone can be authentic, and we are all encouraged to be the best version of ourselves.
Working with us you\'ll be part of a strong team, challenge yourself, build a career, and teach us what we don\'t know. And you\'ll be working towards our vision to be better every day through excellence, compassion and expertise in all we do.
Job responsibilities
For the main duties and responsibilities for this role please read the attached job description and person specification. When completing your application please ensure your supporting statement reflects the criteria set out in these documents by showing how your experience and skills apply to this post.
As part of our vision to have a skilled, diverse and caring workforce, Dorset HealthCare offers support for people getting into work. We offer an employability service to support individuals with application writing, interview skills and other employment support. If you would like or know of anyone who would value this support, please do contactdhc.wideningparticipation@nhs.net
This role includes a £3,000 Recruitment Premium lump sum on commencement of employment and thereafter a further £1,500 Retention Premium per annum (pro-rata), paid in equal monthly instalments provided you remain in post and subject to review by the Trust.
Applications from candidates that require current Healthcare worker sponsorship to work in the UK are unfortunately ineligible to apply for this position.
Person Specification
KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND TRAINING
* Registered practitioner to degree/diploma level supplemented by post registration diploma level specialist training and/or short courses or demonstrable extensive experience in the relevant specialty
* Membership of the relevant Professional Body
* Learning and Assessing in Practice Qualification or equivalent practice assessors training
* Evidence of recent professional development in an up to date portfolio
* Non-Medical Prescriber (if professionally appropriate)
JOB SPECIFIC EXPERIENCE
* Experience working as a practitioner
* Experience of specialist working
* Experience of managing change
* Experience of developing specialist programmes of care for an individual or groups of patients/clients and of providing highly specialist advice
* Ability to prioritise and organise workload effectively
* Recent previous experience within a comparable role
MANAGERIAL / SUPERVISORY
* Experience of providing clinical supervision and mentoring to junior staff
* Experience of devising and delivering training
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
* Experience of using electronic patient / service user record systems
* Able to analyse data and produce reports using Microsoft Excel and Word
PERSONAL QUALITIES/ATTRIBUTES
* Experience of planning and organising complex activities, e.g. organise own time and that of junior staff and learners, planning off duty rotas and undertaking discharge planning involving co-ordination with other agencies.
* Knowledge and understanding of legislation relevant to practice
* Demonstrable leadership qualities and the ability to perform as a role model
ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS
* Demonstrable skills in written and spoken English to a standard which enables the post holder to carry out the full range of duties and responsibilities of the role effectively.
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.
Dorset HealthCare University NHS Foundation Trust
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