Band 4 Nursery Nurse - Bristol

The Specialist Community Perinatal Mental Health Team provides support for women who experience serious mental health problems or present with a high risk of relapse during pregnancy and the postnatal period. The team is able to work alongside women and their families until the babies first birthday. The team work across Bristol, North Somerset, & South Gloucestershire (BNSSG). The team has a shared care ethos, working closely with primary care, maternity services, adult mental health teams, early years' services and independent sector organisations to ensure that women can have access to specialist support, advice, risk assessment and care planning in relation to their mental health needs. The Perinatal Nursery Nurse will work with service users over a variety of areas, but particularly in relation to caring for their child, and ensuring the bonding with, and wellbeing of, their baby. They will have regular contact with the mother; the frequency of this will be agreed between service user and nursery nurse and be dependent on need and level of support required., The Perinatal Nursery Nurse approach will be person centred, adapting to changing needs, but incorporates some of the following:

• Managing the expectation and practicalities of motherhood
• Antenatal support: bonding with bump, looking after yourself during pregnancy, exploring what parting values are important to you. Preparing hospital bag, what equipment/recourses are needed to care for a baby.
• Support with bonding and attachment - postnatal.
• Managing emotions of the mother and signpost to appropriate additional local support if needed (within team and without), and enabling them to feel confident managing their babies emotions.
• Practical parent craft
• Baby Massage (Bonding, value of touch, responsiveness, understanding your babies communication)
• Neonatal Behaviour Observation (NBO)( getting to know your baby)
• Breast/bottle feeding and expressing
• Sleep Hygiene, managing expectations and highlighting sleep patterns in babies
• Support with adapting to new role as a mother
• Early play and development work
• Listening visits (support for mum)
• Signposting (NHS and voluntary/charitable), The perinatal Nursery Nurse will also be involved in identifying and managing any risk that may be present, reporting this as appropriate/necessary, and supporting the process to reduce this risk. They will liaise with other members of the Perinatal Team, in particular the Perinatal Care Coordinator/Associate Worker, and other individuals involved in the service users care.
You will demonstrate experience or strong interest and awareness of perinatal mental health, clinical drivers and risk factors. Due to the very limited public transport availability in the BNSSG area, you must have access to your own transport for work. This role will involve a significant amount of travel. You are strongly encouraged to contact the team before you apply in order to understand the unique aspects of this role We are proud to be fostering a diverse workforce that reflects our communities. A key commitment to this is improving staff representation from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities, those from the LGBTQ+ communities, people with 'lived-experience' of mental health conditions and people living with disabilities,- we are a 'Disability Confident Employer' offering a guaranteed interview to Disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria. This includes people with a variety of disabilities and neurodivergent conditions (for example autism, ADHD, sensory, physical and learning disabilities). We encourage applications from people who wish to work on a flexible basis, recognising that flexibility may mean a range of different working patterns and hours, we do our utmost to work with our staff to meet their needs and the needs of our service users.

Working for our organisation 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.