Health and Wellbeing Coach

Job description

Job responsibilities

1. SCOPE AND PURPOSE OF THE ROLE

Health and Wellbeing Coaches support people to take pro-active steps to improve the way they manage their physical and mental health conditions, based on what matters to them. They support people to develop their knowledge, skills and confidence or to build their patient activation - in managing their health and care, to improve their health outcomes and quality of life. Health coaches do this by coaching and motivating patients through multiple sessions to identify their needs, set goals, and supporting patients to achieve their personalised health and care plan objectives and providing interventions such as self-management education and peer support

Health and Wellbeing Coaches manage and prioritise a caseload, according to the needs, priorities and support required by individuals in the caseload. They identify when a persons needs are beyond the scope of the health and wellbeing coach role and refer them back to other health professionals or organisations. Health and Wellbeing Coaches may work with people by phone, by video conference, or face- to-face

Health and Wellbeing Coaches will have access to ongoing supervision, skills development, and support so they are able to further build their skills and experience within the role.

Please note that the Health and Wellbeing Coach role is a non-clinical role

3. PRIMARY DUTIES & AREAS OF RESPONSIBILITY

Key Responsibilities

Take referrals from the wider practice team including GPs, Practice Nurses, Social Prescribers and Clinical Pharmacists who will have identified patients that meet the criteria for Health and Wellbeing coaches.

Coach and motivate patients through multiple sessions to identify their needs, set goals, and support them to implement and achieve their personalised health and wellbeing objectives. This will include sitting in consultation with a patient and providing them with advice, guidance and a management plan, personalised to their individual needs. It could include dietetics and healthy eating, lifestyle medicine and getting active, safe activities and personal coaching and motivation.

Ensure all interventions and coaching are designed to empower patients to be active participants in their own healthcare, empower them to manage their own health and wellbeing, and live independently.

Support and deliver group consultations, with clinical and non-clinical colleagues, implementing new approaches to health across primary care and supporting individuals to access peer support.

Provide one-to-one and group health coaching support for people with one or more long-term conditions, based on what is important to them, with the aim of improving peoples levels of activation, empowering people to manage their own health and improve their health outcomes.

Manage and prioritise a caseload, in accordance with the needs, priorities and support required by individuals in the caseload. It is vital that you have a strong awareness and understanding of when it is appropriate or necessary to refer people back to other health professionals/agencies, when what the person needs is beyond the scope of the health and wellbeing coach role e.g. when there is a mental health need requiring the patient be referred to an appropriately qualified practitioner.

Participate in regular health coaching supervision and continual learning. This may include, but is not limited to, any or all the following:

o Regular contact with service supervisor

o Refresher training sessions

o Buddying with peers

o Peer support sessions

o 1:1 support from a practitioner with more health coaching experience

o Action Learning Sets

o e-learning to revisit or deepen training

o On-going improvements to systems and processes

Evaluate peoples levels of knowledge, skills and confidence (their Activation level), using tools such as the Patient Activation Measurement (PAM). Focus on those with low levels of activation while recognising that people at other levels of activation may also benefit from health coaching. Measure the impact of the coaching provided, on peoples activation level and adjust activity in response to create a continuous improvement approach.

Key Tasks

Identification of people with long term conditions and low knowledge skills and confidence to manage their health and wellbeing

Responsibility for providing support to a cohort of patients who will benefit from proactive health management and care including being the single point of contact for the person or carer to simplify access and coordination of services

Playing a health coaching role; teaching and supporting patients/carers to understand and manage their own conditions and maintain an independent lifestyle through health coaching techniques to encourage patient activation

Supporting the development of personalised patient care plans, liaising with the practice team, patient/carer and the complex care team as appropriate.

Support the delivery of community based public health initiatives such as physical activity, healthy eating and social connectedness.

Build and maintain strong links with the voluntary sector to network and improve partnership working

Proactively supporting practice targets for number of patients who have seen

Meet people on a one-to-one or group consultation basis, by phone, video conference, or face-to-face.

Give people time to tell their stories and focus on what matters to me;

Build trust and respect with the person, providing non-judgemental and non- discriminatory support, respecting diversity and lifestyle choices;

Work from a strength-based approach focusing on a persons assets;

Use a structured framework/model approach to coach individuals across a series of sessions to identify what is important to them; set personal goals and appropriate steps; build skills and confidence to achieve goals; and use problem-solving to work through challenges;

Work with the principles of self-management to actively support:

o shared decision making with healthcare professionals;

o effective engagement with personalised health and care plans;

o proactive engagement with self-management education and peer support;

o proactive engagement with social prescribing, connecting people to community-based activities which support their health and wellbeing

o proactive engagement with individually sourced activities and support

o access to a care-coordinator and/or a personal health budget, where needed;

o helping people to understand their activation level when engaging with their health and wellbeing;

Gathering and Reporting Information

Work sensitively with people, their families and carers to gather key information, enabling tracking of the impact of health and wellbeing coaching on their health and wellbeing;

Encourage people, their families and carers to provide feedback and to share their stories about the impact of health coaching on their lives;

Support referral organisations to provide appropriate information about the person they are referring. Provide appropriate feedback to referral agencies about the people they referred;

Work closely within the MDT and with GP practices within the PCN to ensure that the relevant SNOMED codes to record activity are inputted into clinical systems (as outlined in the Network Contract DES), adhering to data protection legislation and data sharing agreements

Supervision/ Professional Development

We will help to ensure that coaches;

o Have access to relevant GPs to discuss patient related concerns, and be supported to follow appropriate safeguarding procedures;

o Have access to individual and/or group supervision;

Know and adhere to organisational policies and procedures, including confidentiality, safeguarding, vulnerable adults, lone working, information governance, equality, diversity and inclusion training and health and safety

Miscellaneous

Establish strong working relationships with GPs and practice teams and work collaboratively with other Health and Wellbeing Coaches, Care Coordinators and Social Prescribing Link Workers, supporting each other, respecting each others views and meeting regularly as a team;

Act as a champion for health coaching as a part of the PCNs personalised care offer for patients and organisations

Demonstrate a flexible attitude and be prepared to carry out other duties as may be reasonably required from time to time within the general character of the post or the level of responsibility of the role, ensuring that work is delivered in a timely and effective manner;

Identify opportunities and gaps in the service - and review risks and issues that could impact on service delivery - and provide feedback to continually improve the service and contribute to business planning;

Contribute to the development of policies and plans relating to equality, diversity and health inequalities;

Work in accordance with the practices and PCNs policies and procedures;

Contribute to the wider aims and objectives of the PCN to improve and support primary care.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• Educated to GCSE or equivalent
• NVQ3 or equivalent and/or relevant basic/first level professional qualification or working towards this
• Demonstrable commitment to professional and personal development
• Be willing to attend training with a non- clinical SSM health coaching skills programme (minimum 4 days) by a
• Personalised Care Institute (PCI) accredited trainer or organisation

Desirable

• Training in motivational coaching, behavioural change and goal setting
• Coaching/counselling qualification/experience or other relevant qualification/experience involving reflective listening skills relevant training and experience in non-clinical SSM Health Coaching through a Personal Care Institute (PCI) accredited organisation

Experience

Essential

• Experience in Health Promotion

Desirable

• Experience of working directly in a community
• development context, adult health and social care,
• learning support or public health/health improvement
• (can include unpaid work)
• Experience of supporting people, their families and
• carers in a related role (can include unpaid work)
• Experience of supporting people with their mental
• health, either in a paid, unpaid or informal capacity
• Experience with drugs and alcohol intervention
• Experience of working with people with low level mental health needs
• Experience of data collection and using tools to
• measure the impact of services
• Experience of partnership/collaborative working and
• of building relationships across a variety of
• organisations including the voluntary sector
• Experience using clinical systems (EMIS)

Knowledge and Skills

Essential

• Able to build and maintain relationships whilst maintaining appropriate professional boundaries
• Knowledge & Skills
• Knowledge of personalised care approach
• Understanding of the determinants of health to include social, economic and environmental factors
• Knowledge of the needs of patients with long term conditions
• Knowledge of the needs of patients with mental health conditions
• Understanding of, and commitment to, equality, diversity & inclusion
• Knowledge of IT systems to include the ability to use word processing skills, e mails and internet
• Ability to identify risk and assess/manage risk when working with individuals

Desirable

• Knowledge of public health issues in the local area
• Knowledge and experience of training volunteers
• Knowledge of community development approaches
• Coaching certificate

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.

Employer details

Employer name

The Merrywood Practice

Address

2 Downton Road

Knowle

Bristol

BS4 1WH

Employer's website

https://www.merrywoodpractice.nhs.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)