Job overview

If you’re a Mental Health Nurse, Occupational Therapist, Social Worker or other registered professional working within Mental Health and want to work with and across a variety of GP surgeries in the beautiful City of Norwich  – this could be the ideal role for you!

As Lead PCN Mental Health Practitioner, you’ll play an incredibly important role in transforming community mental health services. We’re working collaboratively with the Integrated Care System to offer ‘Place Based Care’ – ensuring communities receive fast and effective treatment, in the familiar surroundings of their GP surgery.

You role will include shaping the service while managing a small team of Mental Health Practitioners. You will set up and deliver patient clinics that provide support, medication advice (if qualified to prescribe), treatment, education and problem-solving approaches to members of our community experiencing challenges with their mental health. You’ll be providing a dedicated growing service that makes sure individual needs are met in a seamless environment. 

We are happy to accept full time or part time applications and can be flexible / happy to discuss different working patterns, provided these are within and around the GP practice working and enhanced hours.

Main duties of the job

Primary Care Networks (PCNs) are groups of GP practices who work together in a local geographical area – in this case, Norwich is the largest in Norfolk with a population of around 230,000.  It is divided into 4 PCNs with a number of GP practices in each.  Your role would be based in Central Norwich.

As the Lead PCN Mental Health practitioner, you will be the lead for a small team of staff in addition to the day-to-day operational and clinical mental health issues arising in your allocated GP Practice/s. You’ll work at a quick pace, autonomously managing your own clinics and will provide an intervention led approach, acting as an incredibly important mental health resource for people who need specialist care and interventions not available through NHS Talking Therapies and not requiring Secondary Care level services.  You will work with patients from age 16 carrying out Mental Health Assessments and will be an important conduit into specialist mental health services if and where required.

The ideal candidate will be conscientious, kind and compassionate – you’ll be able to work well independently but will also have the support of the wider team and training. Driven by the needs of those who use your service, you will need to have good organisational skills, System resource awareness and experience working in a mental health setting.

Working for our organisation

You will be an autonomous practitioner, making clinical judgements, identifying alternative courses of action, managing, and providing high-quality care.

Your role is an unusual and important one, helping to bridge any gaps between Primary and Secondary health care services.  You will be comfortable working collaboratively and able to build strong relationships with health care professionals across your network and within your designated GP practices.

Here at NSFT we pride ourselves on being a welcoming, talented, friendly and supportive team who like nothing better than sharing experiences and learning from each other. In addition to ongoing training and development opportunities, we are committed to providing an environment in which you can thrive.

Why work for us? We have challenges as a Trust, but we have ambitious aspirations, are pushing ahead with exciting transformation work and we need dedicated individuals to support us on our journey. We have strong, established professional networks coupled with an exceptional leadership team who will ensure you are truly cared for and cared about.