Mental Health Hospital Liaison WorkerNHS

Job summary

As a Mental Health Hospital Liaison Worker at Change Grow Live, you'll be primarily stationed at the prestigious Highgate Mental Health Centre within the vibrant Camden borough. Based on service need you will also be on occasion, required to support within our Camden based hub or at other hospitals and community settings in Camden. Your role will involve attending the Mental Health A&E (MHCAS) and psychiatric treatment wards where you'll provide rapid access to assessments, brief interventions, and facilitate liaison, discharge planning, and onward referrals for service users who are in acute care due to mental health illness, and are also experiencing substance use issues.

Main duties of the job

• To provide specialist assessment of patients attending/admitted to hospital with alcohol related issues using AUDIT C and AUDIT 10 screening tools
• Provide advice, support and training to hospital staff regarding drug and alcohol awareness, screening, assessment processes and referral pathways
• Work with community teams to ensure assertive and effective follow up of both repeat presentations and discharges from the hospital
• Develop specific links with identified specialist acute services and provide in-reach to hospital wards including: Gastroenterology/Hepatology; Orthopaedic falls prevention services; specialist clinics (i.e.: Hypertensive Disease); observation ward; ED

Job description

• Set up effective communication and referral pathways with hospital-based specialist teams. Act as a point of contact for acute referrals.
• Participate with acute services to create/maintain a process for targeting repeat attendees, implementing an investigation system that enables wider services to critically evaluate the circumstances around an individuals hospital admission.
• Provide support to acute hospital services to avoid unnecessary admission to hospital of people who can be supported and treated at community addiction services.
• Develop specific links with identified specialist acute services and provide in reach to hospital wards including Gastroenterology/Hepatology; specialist clinics, observation ward; A&E.
• Provide advanced assessment, planning, implementation, and evaluation of care to a small, complex, specialist caseload of patients who misuse alcohol and/or drugs, while they remain in a hospital setting or as part of the discharge to community plan.
• Work with community teams to ensure assertive and effective follow up of both repeat presentations and discharges from the hospital.
• Provide support and advice to ward staff of those identified as misusing alcohol and/or drugs to prevent further complications from their conditions both in the short term and the long term.
• Ensure Impact of service targets are met.
• In conjunction with hospital medical staff, undertake specific research/audit related to the advancement of practice in the care of people who misuse alcohol and/or drugs.
• Provide specialist substance misuse training to acute, specialist colleagues.

About us

Change Grow Live area charity dedicated to the belief that we can make a difference to our Service Users lives, offering support and respect in a safe environment, treating each user as an individual and working with them to find the right treatment and care options.

Our core values are

'Be open, be compassionate and be bold'

and our team members apply these daily to achieve our mission of helping people change the direction of their lives, grow as individuals, and live life to its full potential.

We believe that having diverse people working as part of our team makes us the organisation that we are.

We actively encourage applications from people from all backgrounds to help us to provide the best possible experience for the people who use our services and to make Change Grow Live a great place to work. If you have any feedback on our recruitment processes (good or bad) we'd love to hear from you so that we can make sure they are fair and we attract and recruit the best, most diverse workforce possible.

The safety of vulnerable children, young people and adults is our absolute priority. We will support you in your role to make sure that you are equipped to support the safety of people who use our services and those around them, to the highest standard possible.