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 five 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
In collaboration with our partners and service users across Barking & Dagenham, Havering Redbridge and Waltham Forest, NELFT has launched our Mental Health Transformation Programme and aim to radically transform our whole model of Mental Health care and support. Our intention is not just to redesign care pathways but to develop a new ethos and culture that helps transform how we work together with partners as ‘one team’ sharing care.
Our aims include a greater focus on prevention and wellbeing and delivering more integrated and personalised care closer to home. By working with Primary Care Networks (PCN) and local partners in each borough, NELFT propose to support plans by using a “neighbourhood” model of care to develop multi-agency, integrated and place-based care to support people with serious mental health needs to receive their care closer to home.
In Barking and Dagenham, as we work towards the neighbourhood model of ‘place-based care’, we have just merged our Access and Brief Intervention Team and our Community Recovery Team into three locality-based Mental Health & Wellness Teams (MH&WTs), aligned to PCNs. Our aim is to improve the journey of our service users through secondary mental health services with continuity of care and no ‘hand-offs’ from one service to another.
Main duties of the job
Come and be part of one of our newly launched, integrated Mental Health & Wellness teams in Barking and Dagenham. Our vision is for this new investment to help start a new era in our Mental Healthcare provision at NELFT, making us among the most holistic, relational and person-centred services in the country.
Our aims include a greater focus on prevention and wellbeing and delivering more integrated and personalised care closer to home. By working with Primary Care Networks (PCN) and local partners in each borough, NELFT propose to support plans by using a “Neighbourhood Team” model of care to develop multi-agency, integrated and place-based care to support people with serious mental health needs to receive their care closer to home.
In alignment with the Community Mental Health Framework for Adults, we intend for our teams to be trauma informed and person-centred, putting relationships back into the heart of care; all team members will receive training in new ways of working including Open Dialogue and trauma informed approaches to care.
Your responsibilities will include dealing with patient queries on the telephone, booking appointments and managing reception for Barking and Dagenham MHWT service.
The applicant will be preferably a RIO user
Knowledge of Microsoft office packages
Working for our organisation
Our Values 2025 - 2030
Working with our colleagues, patients and carers we have co-produced three new values that we aim to embed within our culture here at NELFT.
They are:
We are kind.
We are respectful.
We work together with our communities.
These three values help us to strive to provide the best care by the best people.
Probationary Period
This post will be subject to a probationary period.
High Cost Area Supplement - Outer London
This post also attracts payment for High Cost Area Supplement of 15%of the basic salary (minimum payment of £4,714 and a maximum payment of £5,941 - per annum, pro rata for part time).
Use of AI
Please see attached document regarding acceptable use of AI
during the recruitment process.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
1. Communicate effectively with a range of people, either in person or on the telephone, promptly and in a professional and courteous manner whilst recognising barriers to communication.
2. Ensure that complex calls from anxious and distressed clients are passed to appropriate person to deal with (dealt with) effectively and appropriately, or escalated to senior staff member if appropriate
3. Respond to enquiries, and take appropriate action on behalf of the service, either by telephone, personal contact or correspondence, within agreed time limits.
4. Manage and maintain an efficient administrative system on behalf of others.
5. Draft general correspondence on behalf of own service.
6. Accurately produce reports, correspondence and documents from a variety of sources.
7. Work without supervision and ensure urgent situations are addressed swiftly.
8. Ensure workload is managed and prioritised appropriately.
9. Establish and maintain electronic and manual filing systems.
10. Arrange and take minutes or notes at meetings that are intended for internal review only.
11. Input generic data into organisational systems or in-house records. Printing of simple reports – ie training records or basic clinical info
12. Cover other teams/services, where necessary, which may require working on other sites.
13. Monitor and maintain secure stamp allocation, petty cash refunds for expenses and keys held on site
Front of House
14. Facilitate the smooth running of the service, dealing sensitively with any complaints, problems or issues arising, highlighting and referring problems where necessary to the line manager.
15. Act as a point of contact for service users and effectively run reception.
16. Take clear messages and pass them promptly to the appropriate member of the team using own judgement on urgency.
17. Responsible for ordering stationery and other supplies via the electronic procurement system, receipting goods and chasing shortfalls.
18. Be the first point of contact for service users
Computer/Administration
19. Use the patient records system to enter client related information and care events.
20. Retrieve and record patient information in line with service requirements.
21. Print out monthly team reports on service activity.
22. Participate in audits and surveys as necessary. Provide support in the development of audit reports
Communication
23. Demonstrate effective communication skills and promote a positive image of the team with service users, carers, professionals and external agencies from a variety of disciplines, both within and outside the Trust.
24. Respond to frequent enquiries made by clients/staff, either in person or on the telephone, promptly and in a professional and courteous manner in line with Trust policy.
25. Work competently within current procedures for own working practices and, where appropriate, contribute to the development and implementation of changes to improve own working practices/service, policies, procedures and guidelines.
Specific Tasks directly related to the post:
26. Deliver a reliable client focused administrative service which promotes good customer care and supports the achievement of the trust vision and mission.
27. Provide administrative and reception support to the Mental Health and Wellness Team.
28. Facilitate the smooth and reliable running of the front of house, dealing sensitively with any complaints, problems or issues arising, highlighting and referring problems where necessary to the line manager.
29. Uploading/ opening referrals accurately onto patient records
30. Receive, divert and make telephone calls as required, passing messages accurately and promptly to appropriate colleagues.
31. Ensure that complex calls from anxious and distressed service users or their families are passed to appropriate persons to be dealt with effectively and appropriately or escalated to a senior staff member if appropriate.
32. Display a calm, friendly and helpful approach at all times.
33. Support senior members of staff with organising caseloads
34. Supporting team meetings, taking minutes for team meetings.
35. Formulate letters under the direction of senior staff
36. Management of generic inboxes and ensuring emails are dealt with in a timely manner.
37. Booking of interpreters and issuing of food vouchers.
38. Be able to cross cover across all 3 sites within Barking and Dagenham Mental Health & Wellness Teams.
Please see the attached job description and person specification for more information about this role and working at North East London NHS Foundation Trust. We encourage you to refer to this when completing your application.
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria
39. NVQ level 2 or equivalent standard of literacy and numeracy
Skills
Essential criteria
40. Maintaining efficient admin systems
41. Understanding of data protection/ confidentiality
42. Understand the needs of clients and deal tactfully and sensitively with concerns
43. Updating and maintaining systems
44. Ability to use own initiative and prioritise workload
Desirable criteria
45. Experience of processing referrals
46. Experience of using RIO
Experience
Essential criteria
47. Experience of working in a healthcare setting
48. Working in a busy office environment
49. Experience of storing and maintaining records
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:
50. 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.
51. 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.
52. 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.
53. 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.