Mental Health Social Worker

Do you want to transform the lives of people with mental health conditions?

We welcome applicants who are newly qualified and who are interested in a Band 5 development post.

We are looking for two qualified social workers! We are a friendly and dynamic integrated mental health team in the beautiful City of Oxford and we are looking for strengths based social workers, who are committed to promoting the social perspective of mental health. Based in Headington, Shabs and Hilda will actively promote for you to be a relational based social worker and enhance your social work leadership skills to enable you to flourish and develop in your role.

We invest in higher level post qualifying professional development and our monthly social work forum is where our energetic collective meet to share ideas and talk about the messy stuff.

Newly qualified? Don’t worry! We will give you the opportunity to develop a strong foundation in social work values and ethics (and all the complicated legal bits in between!). Our ASYE programme is excellent and you will have a protected case load for the duration of the supported year of practice.

Main duties of the job

You will play a crucial role in improving mental health outcomes for our service users. You will bring a distinctive social and rights based perspective to the work that you do and promote this within the multi-disciplinary team and beyond. You will liaise with other agencies to ensure that the needs and rights of people with lived experience of mental health are at the front and centre of services and interventions.

You will use your advanced relationship skills to work with people to make positive and self-directed change and support them to work towards recovery as defined by them. You will provide advocacy support and understand the important role of carers, working in partnership to support them especially at time of crisis.

Providing statutory social care assessments under the Care Act and s.117 after-care Mental Health Act is a key feature of the role and you will provide a strengths based, rights focused assessment to identify and meet need, ensuring timely review of packages of support.

Working with complexity and risk is a key feature of the role and you will use your safeguarding adults knowledge to identify abuse and neglect and work with the person and other agencies to seek ways in which to protect and safeguard the person. At times, you will need to use legislative frameworks such as the Mental Capacity Act and Mental Health Act to support people who are unable to make decisions for themselves, balancing and protecting the rights of people and others.

Working for our organisation

Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust provides physical, mental health and social care for people of all ages across Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Swindon, Wiltshire, Bath and North East Somerset.

Our services are delivered at community bases, hospitals, clinics and people’s homes, delivering care as close to home as possible

Our vision is that no matter who you are or where you are, you will tell us that you receive: “Outstanding care delivered by an outstanding team”

Our values are: “Caring, safe and excellent”

At Oxford Health we offer a wide range of benefits designed to support your career and wellbeing. These include:

- Excellent opportunities for career progression
- Access to tailored individual and Trust wide learning and development
- 27 days annual leave, plus bank holidays, rising to 33 days with continuous service
- NHS Discount across a wide range of shops, restaurants and retailers
- Competitive pension scheme
- Lease car scheme
- Cycle to work scheme
- Employee Assistance Programme
- Mental Health First Aiders
- Staff accommodation (please note waiting lists may apply)
- Staff networking and support groups hosted by our Equality, Diversity & Inclusion team

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The Mental health social work pathway offers regular supervision and values the importance of this to support colleagues in their role. Peer reflection is a vital aspect of the role which supports colleagues to ensure that their Social Work England registration is upheld. We offer higher level training opportunities such as PEPS 1 and 2, best interests assessor and AMHP training and work collaboratively with the local authority to provide a robust and comprehensive ASYE package.

We have a strong social work leadership team across the county to ensure that mental health social work is promoted and supported across adult mental health services.

Our community need social workers to work full time (yes - you are that valued!) but we understand the importance of work life balance so if you have other interests that you want to develop then let’s have a chat to see how we can help you achieve a balance that works for you.

Our diverse community would love to have you join the team so get in touch for an informal chat.