Avon & Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust

Band 7 Senior Recovery Practitioner - Bristol

The closing date is 22 September 2025

Job summary

A really exciting and career enhancing opportunity has arisen within the North Bristol Recovery Service for a secondment position to a Band 7 Senior Practitioner. This is a fulltime position working from Monday to Friday.

We are looking for an experienced, pro-active, dynamic and progressive individual, who has excellent communication and leadership skills, and has a professional qualification in either Nursing, Occupational Therapy or Social Work. You will require a high standard of organisational skills, the ability to understand the service and how to make changes for the better, embedding quality improvements, and to implement these changes in a sensitive and evidenced based way.

You will be able to ensure that robust support and supervision is in place for all staff, and to focus on our duty commitments, the duty rota, and also taking a lead with managing expectations around referrals to the Recovery Service. This will involve liaising and communicating effectively with other teams and services and having a thorough oversight of our current waiting list. This role would suit someone with tenacity and diplomacy, and who is self-motivated. The role will also include a small caseload involving more complex Service Users, and also the ability to be able to undertake assessments/visits/reviews where indicated to support the team.

Main duties of the job

There would also be an expectation to act up when the Team Manager is not available/on leave, and an understanding of both health and social care would be really desirable as we are an integrated team, and we work closely with our Local Authority Colleagues. You would receive direct support from the Recovery Team Manager, our other Senior Practitioner, and the Community Services Manager.

We hold regular meetings, and we are all committed to ensuring that our Bristol Recovery Service continues to make changes for the better. The team itself is cohesive, supportive and hard-working, and a good sense of humour is a very desirable asset! We would be open to a candidate with a creative mind, who would be really committed to working with the team to strive for excellence.

About us

We are AWP (Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust) a diverse organisation with over 5,000 dedicated staff providing inpatient and community-based mental health care.

We provide services from a range of locations to approximately 1.8 million people living in Bath and North East Somerset (B&NES), Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Swindon, across the county of Wiltshire and in parts of Dorset.

Our outstanding people promote mental health and wellbeing. The expertise and resources within AWP are dedicated to a person-centred approach for those who use our services and for all employees. We recognise that happy and fulfilled employees give better care.

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.

Date posted

08 September 2025

Pay scheme

Agenda for change

Band

Band 7

Salary

£47,810 to £54,710 a year

Contract

Secondment

Working pattern

Full-time

Reference number

342-BR144-0925

Job locations

Greenway Centre

Doncaster Road

Bristol

BS10 5PY

Job description

Job responsibilities

1. To lead and inspire the team to deliver a high quality and effective service for service users and carers.

2. To provide clinical leadership to ensure where appropriate the service will work effectively alongside other services, to manage risk and prevent hospital admission for service users with the most complex and acute needs.

3. To undertake and support the specialist ongoing assessment of physiological and/or psychological functioning for service users with the most complex and health and wellbeing needs. This may include:a. The use of standardised assessment tools, i.e. the Cluster Allocation Support Tool (CAST), KGVb. The Recovery Star/Person Centred Carec. History, strengths and aspirationsd. Mental statee. Impact of culture and diversityf. Functional needsg. The needs of family and carerh. Evaluation of riski. Physical healthj. Complicating factorsk. The interventions and treatments required to enable positive change.l. Social care needsm. Safeguarding and public protectionn. Capacity under the Mental Capacity Act

4. To be responsible for, both individually and within the team, the development, delivery and review of comprehensive and complex treatment programmes using appropriate frameworks in line with evidencebased practice, including strategies to manage risk for service users with complex needs and carers, bringing in other resources as required.

5. Within sphere of expertise, and advanced practice, to be responsible for coordinating care for a small number of service users, also providing defined interventions to individuals on other workers caseloads.

6. To plan, deliver, and evaluate defined advanced specialist therapeutic interventions within sphere of expertise ,including to service users who maybe on other caseloads. This might include:a. Family interventionb. Psychological therapies such as CBT.c. Medication managementd. Interventions under the Mental Health Act

7. To oversee and deliver a range of defined activities/interventions to improve the carers ability to support the service user and to enable them in their relationship with the service user.

8. To lead, in partnership with the team manager, ensuring the service develops and maintains excellent clinical standards, and effective caseloadsupervision, underpinned by robust and effective individual and team supervision processes.

9. To oversee and ensure, across the team, there are effective risk management plans and strategies, for service users and carers, taking account of risks to service users, carers, the organisation, staff and the public.

10. In collaboration with service users and carers, to be responsible, across the service for facilitating and ensuring, the development of complex comprehensive crisis plans, rapid access plans, advance statements etc, involving other agencies such as primary care etc where appropriate.

11. To develop and maintain, good partnership working with other services throughout all treatment episodes, including regular liaison within Primary Health Care Team, inpatient and intensive services, day services, voluntary sector and with nominated carers/advocates.

12. Develop and maintain communication with a wide range of people/services/ agencies about complex matters or in complex situations with the purpose of sharing developing or resolving difficult or complex issues for the benefit of service users/carer and the service.

13. To represent the organisation in a range of settings, presenting, facilitating or explaining as appropriate and dealing with any questions or difficulties as they arise.

14. To personally build and lead others to build, hope inspiring relationships with service users, which acknowledge the personal journey of each person, and focus on strengths and aspirations to allow the creation of meaningful personal recovery plans.

15. To support the team manager in developing systems and processes for the effective management and monitoring of the team caseload, on a day to day basis, ensuring that time is prioritised effectively, and service users and carer receive the appropriate level of service.

16. To lead and promote a whole team approach within the service to ensure a shared ownership of the team caseload.

17. To be responsible for regularly monitoring and evaluating treatment programmes for service users and carers, making appropriate clinical/practice decision in regard to ongoing needs, and offering supervision to others.

18. To be responsible for the protection of individuals from abuse and harm in line with local safeguarding policies and procedures, by developing and reviewing with others protection plans and management strategies, ensuring the appropriate sharing of information.

19. Personally and leading others to collaboratively and sensitively work with individuals with a range of mental health needs to develop skills to manage their own health, in accordance with their personal recovery plan by actively promoting and using approaches which are affirming, build on strengths, identify past positive experiences and success, and use small steps to move towards the persons goal.

20. To provide a leadership role within the team, in the absence of the Team manager, providing cover for the manager and colleagues as required.

21. To work with the Team Manager to ensure the continuing improvements to the service in line with organisational goals.

22. To maintain the single health and social care record, ensuring both paper and electronic records are kept up to date in accordance with professional and organisational standards.

23. Report and record within agreed timeframes, all activity relating to information reporting and performance requirements.

24. To participate in, and deliver as required, management, caseload and clinical supervision in accordance with trust policy.

25. Demonstrate responsibility for developing own practice in line with professional qualifications and for the development of others, both practitioners, and those in training by making use of and providing, effective feedback, specialist therapeutic clinical supervision, coaching and appraisal.

26. To adhere to professional codes of conduct ensuring required skills andcompetencies required are maintained.

27. Promote monitor and maintain best practice in health, safety and security of self and others, undertaking assessments and taking appropriate action where required.

28. Work with the Team Manager to develop a culture that promotes equality and values diversity.

29. Lead, practices which enable effective team working.

30. To participate in on call rotas as required.

31. To participate in local arrangements in order to ensure consistent care to service users across the local geography.