Consultant Psychiatrist - Older Adults (Community)

Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust celebrates diversity and promotes equal opportunities; we are committed to challenging and eliminating racism and other forms of discrimination and advancing and promoting equality of opportunity in the provision of services and creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We believe that everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and respect.
We take positive action to support disadvantaged groups and also particularly encourage applications from ethnic minorities, disabled and LGBTQIA+ people that are under-represented in our workforce. Furthermore we welcome applications from reservists and ex-armed forces personnel as we recognise the benefits of the values, skills, training and experience that they bring to their work with us. We encourage all applicants to share their equality information with us.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------, As a Consultant Old Age Psychiatrist working for Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust you will be responsible for ensuring that our service users' needs are met through the delivery of high quality care.
As a leader of the outpatient multi-disciplinary team at Hartley Hospital you will work in a state of the art mental health facility, providing clinical care to older adults who require specialist outpatient care. You will work closely with a wide range of clinical and professional disciplines in order to deliver holistic care by completing assessments of new referrals to the team, making formulations and managing their treatment in order to optimise the quality of life of the service users under your caseload., The post holder will be the Responsible Clinician for patients in their caseload within the Older Adults Community Mental Health Team.
There are allocated GP surgeries for each caseload within the service and these are allocated to ensure equity in terms of number of referrals. In line with New Ways of Working, the post holder will provide a consultative, supervisory and supportive role to the multidisciplinary team's work.
They will take an active part in the clinical work of the team and a lead role in the development of the service. The post holder will be expected to provide leadership to the Team whose role is to provide assessment, management and support to people who may need contact with Older Adults Mental Health services. Practitioners within the team will support access to services in a timely manner, as well as ensure arrangements are in place to enhance smooth pathways between primary care and secondary services.
The post holder will be enabled to work in a consultative manner, being accessible to team members, GP and primary care staff, patients and carers, for the provision of expert advice and interventions in a timely manner. The post holder will operate within multi-disciplinary integrated and co-located teams, which including Health staff and Social services staff. The post holder will be expected to be part of the allocation procedure within the team and be responsive and flexible to the needs of the team.

Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 1.4 million people across our region (Halton, Warrington, Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton and St Helens) and is also commissioned for services that cover the North West, North Wales and the Midlands.
We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities.
At the heart of all we do is our commitment to 'perfect care' - care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together. We're currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so.

The post holder will be responsible for the overall management of patients under their caseload which is defined by groupings of General Practice surgeries in the local area. There are a total of 22 General Practice surgeries included within the area which Hartley Hospital covers and each on average makes 38 referrals per year to the Older Adult Services. The majority of referrals are from primary care and a small number are from Liaison mental health services or from other medical specialties such as Neurology or Geriatrics.
Currently there are 1824 open referrals to the team as a whole and 613 to the advertised post's MDT, with the average population covered by each practice being 7,254 and an average of 2,984 patients over the age of 65 being registered at each practice.
The number of referrals per month for the last six months are as follows:
July 101
August 83
September 75
October 85
November 90
December 73
The team composition is as follows:
2 x FTE Consultant Psychiatrists - Post Holder, Dr Williams/Dr Govindaraj
1 s Staff Grade Doctor - Dr Leahy
1 x Band 7 team manager - Kerry Adamson
2 x Advanced Nurse Practitioners (1 per MDT) - lead and chair their MDT and complete new patient assessments
1 x Band 7 OT
4 x Band 6 CPNs (2 per MDT)
2 x Band 5 CPNs (1 per MDT)
2 x Band 6 nurses in titration team
1.4 x Band 6 nurses in Care Home Liaison Team
2 x Band 4 Assistant Practitioners in Care Home Liaison Team
1 x Band 4 Assistant Practitioner for memory reviews and physical health checks
2 x Band 3 Support Workers (only funded for people with a functional diagnosis)
1 x Clinical Psychologist and Psychology Assistant., Should you require a reasonable adjustment to our recruitment process please email [email protected] to ensure that measures can be put in place to support you.
We reserve the right to close any vacancy earlier than advertised in exceptional circumstances once we have received a high volume of applications.
The Trust expects all post holders who require an enhanced DBS for their role subscribe to the DBS Update Service. You will be required to enrol for this service for a fee of £13 per year and maintain registration. Trans applicants who require a DBS check and do not want to reveal details of their previous identity can contact the DBS Sensitive Applications Team or email [email protected]) with their application number once they have completed their DBS application form. The team can prevent any previous identity showing on the DBS Certificate, unless the applicant has a conviction under their previous details in which case this will need to be disclosed.
Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.
Please be advised that the use of Artificial Intelligence on applications is monitored and if you choose to use this, you must declare this on your application form.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------