Lead Nurse for Early Support & Family Health

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

To ensure safe and effective clinical practice.

•            To be professionally accountable for the maintenance of standards of professional practice and behaviours as set by the Nursing & Midwifery Council, national legislation and local standards.

•            To take personal responsibility for actions and omissions, and fully recognise personal accountability.

•            To practise within an ethical framework based upon dignity and respect for the well-being and safety of patients and clients.

•            To demonstrate expert and extensive knowledge in Safeguarding, Early Help Support processes, Family Help and interventions.

•            To be able to work in a variety of settings with a variety of staff groups in educating and embedding Early Help into their daily practice.

•            Act as a change agent, developing effective practice through the effective utilisation and integration of evidence based practice, setting implementing and monitoring evidence based standards of care, policies, procedures and protocols.

•            Ensure a culture of continuous quality improvement through the use of audit, patient feedback and reflection on practice by self and other members of the team.

•            Promote a clean and safe environment for staff, patients and visitors by ensuring compliance with legislation, policies and protocols including health and safety, healthcare associated infection prevention, clinical governance, including risk management and critical incident reporting and root cause analysis.

•            Ensure a high standard of compassionate care and record keeping in accordance with Nursing and Midwifery Council, national legislation and local standards.

•            Lead effective communication with the multi-professional team.

•            Report incidents and near misses promptly and appropriately and take effective action to minimise future risk.

•            Continually evaluate and audit the practice of self and others at individual and systems levels, selecting and applying valid and reliable approaches and methods which are appropriate to needs and context, and acting on the findings.

•            Continually assess and monitor risk in own and others’ practice and challenge others about wider risk factors.

 To enhance the patients experience

•            To support practitioners to assess individuals, families and populations holistically using a range of different assessment methods and ensuring these are encompassed within the Early Support and Family Help plans.

•            To support and empower practitioners to provide a holistic approach in identifying early those circumstances whereby social factors are or could impact upon a child’s wellbeing.

•            To support Health Professionals to initiate Early Support and Family Help plans and where appropriate, develop plans which reflect the Think Family aims and objectives whilst ensuring sustainable outcomes are met.

•            Have a health promotion and prevention orientation, and comprehensively assess patients for risk factors and early signs of illness. Using ‘making every contact count’ as an approach to change behaviour through interactions with individuals, carers and families to support them in making positive changes to their physical and mental health and wellbeing.

•            Draw on a diverse range of highly specialist knowledge in decision-making to determine the most appropriate interventions required in accordance to the Wolverhampton Thresholds Document that is overseen by Wolverhampton Safeguarding Together.

•            To promote strong partnership working within the virtual health team, Family hubs and Family Help teams. Strengthening Families Hubs to embed a whole family approach.

•            Working in partnership with others, delegate and refer to other professions and services as appropriate to optimise health and social outcomes and resource use.

•            Ensure data is collected to measure impact and outcomes and is regularly audited to ensure plans are undertaken in accordance with agreed standards.

•            To support local partnership meetings with both quantitative and qualitative information identifying local and city wide progress on Early Support and Family Help.

•            To develop and deliver training that will support the development of the whole family approach in health settings and practice.

•            To support health professionals to identify families that meet the Family Hub, Early Support and Family Help programmes.

•            To provide regular updates to staff at The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust in relation to national priorities and requirements.

•            Work within appropriately defined boundaries of practice.

•            Within a multidisciplinary framework, develop a culture of person-centred care taking a “Think Family” approach to safeguarding children.

•            Promote a caring environment where equality and diversity issues are respected and patients are enabled to be partners in their care.

•            Ensure that everyone within the sphere of care is treated with dignity and humanity, understanding individual needs, showing compassion and sensitivity, and provide care in a way that respects all people equally.

Teamwork

•            Demonstrate resilience and determined leadership in contexts that are unfamiliar, complex and unpredictable.

•            To be an active participant in any related meetings specific to the Lead Nurse role.

•            Strive constantly to improve practice and health outcomes so that they are consistent with or better than national and international standards through initiating, facilitating and leading change at individual, team, organisational and system levels.

•            Engage stakeholders and use high-level negotiating and influencing skills to develop and improve practice.

•            Work across professional, organisational and system boundaries and proactively develop and sustain new partnerships and networks to influence and improve health, outcomes and healthcare delivery systems.

•            Develop practices that are appropriate to patient and service need through understanding the implications of and applying epidemiological, demographic, social, political and professional trends and developments.

•            In partnership with others identify the need for change, proactively generate practice innovations and lead new practice and service redesign solutions to better meet the needs of patients and the service.

•            Act as a visible positive role model, creating a supportive ethos to empower staff to contribute to the delivery of high quality person centred care.

•            Ensure nurses and nursing staff take responsibility for the care they provide and answer for their own judgments and actions and carry out those actions in a way that is agreed with their patients, and the families and carers, and in a way that meets the requirements of organisational policies and procedures, their professional bodies and the law.

•            Take all reasonable care of health and safety at work for you, your team and others and to co-operate with employers to ensure compliance with health and safety requirements.

•            Develop strategies and undertake activities that monitor and improve the quality of healthcare and the effectiveness of own and others’ practice.

To ensure effective contribution to the delivery of the organisation’s objectives

•            Network with peers across professional groups and clinical disciplines promoting the exchange of knowledge, skills and resources. Have high-level communication skills and contribute to wider development of practice by publicising and disseminating work through presentations at meetings, conferences and articles in the professional press.

•            Attend professional forums and disseminate information within the Trust

•            Alert appropriate individuals and organisations to gaps in evidence and/or practice knowledge and, as either a principal investigator or in collaboration with others, support and conduct research that will enhance practice.

•            Work in partnership with a range of practitioners and managers in the planning or development of own service promoting the involvement of patients/public.

•            Support the development and implementation of the Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting Strategy for the organisation.

•            Develop and maintain a working knowledge of local, national and professional strategy and policy, ensuring that organisational goals are reflected in personal objectives and development plans.

•            Ensure that quality standards, both those agreed with the commissioners and dictated by national policy, are achieved and establish local quality standards, to improve patient care and efficiency.

•            Demonstrate by self and through team compliance to the pledges of the NHS Constitution 2012 and Trust values.

•            Ensure that a value based approach underpins all elements of care delivery.