Health Visitor

Job description

Job responsibilities

1. Responsible for ensuring the co-ordination and delivery of skilled, effective care to promote positive health and respond to identified, individual client and population/community needs. This will reflect the prime objective of tackling disadvantage and inequality to impact on the health divide and effectively participate in the mainstream development of Early Help Services to fully embrace the ethos of integrated care delivery.

2. Provide professional and team leadership to manage a defined team delivering care to a geographical caseload/population. Undertake an ongoing community health needs profile of the caseload identifying individual, family and community needs affecting health and social well-being, including Emotional Health Screening, assessing the need for specific services and ensuring that the appropriate level of interaction is provided and co-ordinated.

3. Work with vulnerable children and families in line with national and local policies relating to safeguarding children and provide specialist support and advice to children, families and schools regarding the health and wellbeing needs of children.

4. Work in partnership with other agencies, particularly health services, education and social care. Manage and co-ordinate programmes of intervention for a caseload made up of individual children and families, to plan, implement, monitor and review programmes of intervention based on identified individual health and social needs.

Key Responsibilities

5. Identify those children who are vulnerable and/or at risk from harm. Respond appropriately to incidents of actual or suspected abuse and to ensure that child protection practice is in line with local and national guidelines and policies and prioritise court reports and Child Protection documentation.

6. Attend professionally related working groups as appropriate, which are involved in developing and agreeing local policies, protocols and standard setting to identify and respond to local health needs. Participate in projects, pilots, research and audit as and when required by the Organisation.

7. Maintain a working knowledge of, and participate at a local level in, the delivery of public health targets, local delivery plan, business plan, benchmarking and governance plans and Childrens National Service Framework targets, ensuring that practice reflects their objectives.

8. Responsible for care plans/programmes delegated to members of the health visiting team, providing clear measurable outcomes and developing systems to review the effectiveness of care. Maintain communication through Healthy Child Meetings allocating work to appropriate professionals.

9. Work in partnership with families and other agencies to promote and support a healthy lifestyle and positive parenting. Develop, deliver and evaluate programmes of education and support to targeted individuals and groups within the community.

10. Provide safe and competent advice for individual clients receiving care for a condition for which the Health Visitor takes clinical responsibility. Prescribe from the Nurse Prescribers Formulary for District Nurses and Health Visitors, from the Nurse Prescribers Extended Formulary or to act as a supplementary prescriber, where appropriate qualifications have been achieved.

11. Investigate and report complaints and incidents at a team level (as appropriate) and in accordance with the Organisations complaints and incident reporting policies and complete risk assessment.

12. Offer advice, guidance and support to children and families to develop good practice and publicise the available areas of assistance.

13. Understand, uphold and promote the aims of the councils equality, diversity and inclusion policies; health, safety and wellbeing of self and others; and Organisational values in everything you do. Equality and Diversity practice covers both interaction with staff, service users and communities and includes challenging discrimination and promoting equality of opportunity for all.

Contacts & Relationships

• Children, young people and families.
• Education Providers, Head Teachers and Schools.
• Community Services, Fire and Police.
• Public Health Directorate, Somerset CCG.
• Heads of Service, Children and Young People Provider Services and Locality Leads.
• Primary Care GP practices.
• Midwifery Services, Paediatric Services, Integrated Therapy Services.
• Voluntary Sector.
• External relationships with other agencies and Acute NHS Trusts.

Communicate in person, face-to-face, in writing and, where appropriate, electronically with all the above contacts.

• Establish clear lines of communication between all members of multi-agency and professional Primary Care teams, working collaboratively with all relevant health care professionals and agencies including Children Social care.
• Liaise with other agencies, professionals, organisations to keep them informed of service provision and with consent, advise on individual cases.
• Identify improvements to service provision, policies and procedures.
• Co-ordinate inter-agency/partnership working to enhance access to services and provide comprehensive service provision.
• Attend and contribute to Area team meeting monthly to facilitate effective communication within children and young peoples services.

Resources

• Manage the local team within the agreed resources (financial and personnel). This will include physical resources e.g. pharmaceutical items and efficient and effective use of staffing resources. Establish within available resources, specific interventions to enable early intervention.
• Ensure all loans of equipment are monitored and reviewed regularly in line with agreed protocols and guidelines, eg enuresis alarms, CONI equipment.
• Prioritise work and manage time effectively by utilising individuals skills, knowledge and competencies and co-ordinate monthly Team meetings as appropriate.
• Enable and support the development of skills and competencies of all members of the team through ongoing supervision, regular appraisal and the development of individual Personal Development Plans, including preceptorship and act as an assessor for pre/post registration students and providing community/public health knowledge. Deliver training programmes on behalf of the service to internal and external services as appropriate.
• Recommend and initiate improvements in service delivery to clients and to implement changes in practice, where appropriate.
• Provide and participate in clinical supervision on a regular basis as per policy and guidelines for best practice.

Further information specific to this job

The successful candidate has a responsibility for promoting and safeguarding the welfare of the children and young people they are responsible for or come into contact with.

Somerset Council is subject to Part 7 of the Immigration Act (2016) and therefore the ability to speak fluent English will be an essential requirement for customer-facing roles.

This job requires a criminal background check (DBS) via the disclosure procedure.

Person Specification

Experience

Essential

• Experience of working across agencies. Understanding and experience of the application of research in practice. Evidence of child protection experience. Experience in identifying and assessing health needs including community health needs.

Qualifications

Essential

• Registered Health Visitor Public Health Specialist Practitioner Degree (or equivalent qualification pre-1988) Evidence of continued professional development

Desirable

• Leadership programme or prepared to undertake a course Nurse Prescriber V100 Qualification or equivalent

Personal Attributes

Essential

• Experience of working across agencies. Understanding and experience of the application of research in practice. Evidence of child protection experience. Experience in identifying and assessing health needs including community health needs.

Knowledge and skills

Essential

• Demonstrate working knowledge of the Public Health and Preventative Strategy Working knowledge of child protection procedures and policies Ability to organise and deliver education on a 1-1 or group setting Required to have responsibility for a caseload and delegate appropriately, with ability to organise and prioritise workload Willingness to lead teams Public Health Nurses and Assistants Proven clinical and managerial leadership ability Report writing knowledge and skills IT Competent Maintain records as per NMC Guidelines/local policy Good listening, communication and ability to form good working relationships with colleagues and clients

Desirable

• Audit and research skills

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.

UK Registration

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).

Employer details

Employer name

Somerset County Council

Address

Key Centre

Feltham Lane

Frome

BA11 5AJ

Employer's website

https://www.somerset.gov.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)