Band 6 Specialist Practitioner and Group Facilitator - Bristol

Job description

Job overview

Sequoia is a specialist NHS-commissioned service, co-delivered by Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership (AWP) and Rethink Mental Illness, supporting adults with mild-moderate complex emotional needs (CEN) and personality difficulties across the BNSSG area. Rooted in lived experience and recovery principles, the service provides evidence-based group interventions including Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)-informed groups, Mentalisation-Based Treatment (MBT)-informed groups, psychoeducation courses, and peer support programmes.

As a Specialist Practitioner and Group Facilitator, you will initially be co-delivering DBT informed skills groups. With the purpose of enabling service users to manage emotional intensity, build resilience, and achieve recovery goals. You will work collaboratively with NHS teams, voluntary & community partners, and service users to promote wellness, safety, and inclusion.

This role is offered at full time hours - Mon to Fri. Most service-user facing work runs 9:00am-5:00pm, though some evening sessions are required, so flexibility to work one evening weekly is essential.

This is a hybrid role with most staff being based from home with an expectation to travel for planned meetings and some group delivery, based in community settings within the BNSSG locality. Recognising the emotional impact of this work, we provide robust supervision (individual and team-based), ongoing CPD opportunities & regular chances to connect socially with colleagues.

Main duties of the job

• Facilitate DBT informed groups, adapting content to meet service user needs.
• Support delivery of psychoeducation and peer support courses.
• Assess and triage referrals, determine service suitability, and plan reviews and next steps with service users.
• Support safe discharge back to GP care following programme completion.
• Contribute to crisis planning, safeguarding, and protective interventions.
• Provide clinical leadership, mentoring, and supervision within the team for our Rethink colleagues.
• Work as part of the duty team dealing with ad hoc situations that arise.
• Maintain accurate records and meet reporting requirements.
• Participate in service development, supervision, and training.

Working for our organisation

We are the lead provider of healthcare for people with serious mental illness, learning disabilities and autism across Bath and North East Somerset (BaNES), Swindon and Wiltshire, and Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire.

We aim to provide High Quality, Compassionate Care everywhere, every day. This means our services will be safe, clinically effective and provide a positive all round experience for our patients, families and carers. And we believe passionately in treating everyone with kindness, respect and empathy.

Key to this is providing a supportive and safe environment for our 4,000 staff where we all feel welcome and able to do the best we can for those we support. Our staff and teams work incredibly hard delivering services across more than 90 locations, covering 2,200miles, to more than 1.8million people.

At AWP we actively encourage applicants from all backgrounds; we are particularly keen to encourage applications from people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, those with disabilities and from the LGBTQ+ community. We want people to bring their unique blend of experiences, backgrounds, perspectives and knowledge to AWP, as diversity makes us stronger.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

This role is focused on providing effective, evidence-based interventions to people with complex emotional needs and personality difficulties, enabling them to meet daily health, social care, and wellbeing needs in line with recovery goals.

Key responsibilities include:

• Conducting support conversations covering mental state, risk, physical health, social care needs, safeguarding, and capacity under the Mental Capacity Act.
• Reviewing treatment programmes, incorporating psychological therapies (DBTi, MBTi), psychosocial interventions (Peer Support and Psych Education), considering people's motivation to change.
• Delivering interventions to improve carers' ability to support service users.
• Building hope-inspiring relationships with service users, focusing on strengths and aspirations to create meaningful recovery plans.
• Leading and supporting colleagues in clinical practice, mentoring students, and contributing to professional development.
• Ensuring compliance with safeguarding, confidentiality, infection control, and health and safety policies.
• Promoting Sequoia's ethos of community, resilience, and inclusion, inspired by the Sequoia tree's symbolism of strength and growth.
• Supporting service development through co-production, service user participation, and feedback mechanisms

This post is open to newly qualified social workers. In line with trust policy, all newly qualified social workers will be recruited initially at Band 5 level, regardless of advertised role banding. All NQSWs are expected to successfully complete their ASYE within 2 years of employment, unless there are exceptional circumstances in which case it may be agreed to extend this for a further 2 years.

On successful completion of the ASYE, for which you will be given full support of an experienced Social Worker as well as Divisional Social Work Lead, and peer support from other ASYE candidates, you will then be eligible to progress to a Band 6 position.

If you have been appointed to an advertised Band 6 role this will be an automatic progression, following confirmation of your successful completion. If you have been appointed to a Band 5 you will then be eligible to apply for a subsequent Band 6 vacancy.

Person specification

Qualifications and registration

Essential criteria

• Diploma level/Degree in relevant health/social care profession, eg RMN, OT, Social Worker
• Current relevant registration with the NMC or HCPC and commitment to CPD.

Desirable criteria

• Relevant post-registration qualifications, such as; DBT, MBT, Brief Interventions etc

Experience and Knowledge

Essential criteria

• Demonstrates substantial post-registration experience gained working in a range of front-line adult mental health services, undertaking assessment and delivering interventions.
• Is able to deliver from a range of possible key therapeutic interventions, DBT, MBT SCM, CBT, Psychosocial interventions, Family Interventions.
• Experience of delivering group work in a mental health setting
• Demonstrates substantial experience of assessing risk and developing risk management strategies

Desirable criteria

• Experience from a wide range of settings.
• Experience of co-production and service user participation

Skills and Abilities

Essential criteria

• Highly developed verbal communication skills, able to engage effectively with people at all levels even when a more assertive approach is needed.
• Highly developed active listening skills, which allow for reframing and testing of understanding.
• Highly developed written communication skills, with experience of compiling and sorting notes and reports, establishing statistical data and analysing information.
• Substantially developed IT skills including competent use of Microsoft Office, and the use of electronic record keeping systems.
• Experience of delivering mental health interventions online, both 1-1 and groups
• Demonstrates a willingness to embrace new technology and processes.
• Mobile with the facility to move quickly across a geographically dispersed area with limited access to public transport.

Other Requirements

Essential criteria

• Empathy for individuals who have experienced mental health problems and ability to cope with behaviour which may be challenging at times.

We are proud to be fostering a diverse workforce that reflects our communities. A key commitment to this is improving staff representation from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities, those from the LGBTQ+ communities, people with 'lived-experience' of mental health conditions and people living with disabilities,- we are a 'Disability Confident Employer' offering a guaranteed interview to Disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria. This includes people with a variety of disabilities and neurodivergent conditions (for example autism, ADHD, sensory, physical and learning disabilities).

We encourage applications from people who wish to work on a flexible basis, recognising that flexibility may mean a range of different working patterns and hours, we do our utmost to work with our staff to meet their needs and the needs of our service users.

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