Social Prescribing Link Worker

Job description

Job responsibilities

Rotherham Central North Primary Care Network

Job Purpose:

A. Assist patients identified by GP Practices to access support from local VCS organisations and statutory services to meet their health and well-being needs.

B. Provide personalised support to individuals, their families and carers to take control of their wellbeing, live independently and improve their health outcomes. Co-produce a personalised support plan to improve health and wellbeing, introducing or reconnecting people to community groups and statutory services.

Main Duties and Responsibilities:

A Referrals

1. Promote social prescribing, its role in self-management, and the wider determinants of health.

2. Build relationships with key staff in GP practices within the local Primary Care Network (PCN), attending relevant meetings, becoming part of the wider network team, giving information and feedback on social prescribing.

3. Seek regular feedback about the quality of service and impact of social prescribing on PCNs.

4. Be proactive in encouraging self-referrals and connecting with all local communities

B Provide personalised support

5. Meet people on a one-to-one basis, making home visits where appropriate within organisations policies and procedures. Give people time to tell their stories and focus on what matters to me. Build trust with the person, providing non-judgemental support, respecting diversity and lifestyle choices. Work from a strength-based approach focusing on a persons assets.

6. Be a friendly source of information about wellbeing and prevention approaches. Help people identify the wider issues that impact on their health and wellbeing, such as debt, poor housing, being unemployed, loneliness and caring responsibilities.

7. Adopt a person-centred approach by working with the person, their families and carers and consider how they can all be supported through social prescribing.

8. Help and empower people to maintain or regain independence through living skills, adaptations, enablement approaches and simple safeguards.

9. Work with individuals to co-produce a simple personalised support plan based on the persons priorities, interests, values and motivations including what they can expect from the groups, activities and services they are being connected to and what the person can do for themselves to improve their health and wellbeing.

10. Where appropriate, physically introduce people to community groups, activities and statutory services, ensuring they are comfortable. Follow up to ensure they are happy, able to engage, included and receiving good support.

C Support community groups and VCS organisations to receive referrals

11. Forge strong links with local VCS organisations, community and neighbourhood level groups, utilising their networks and building on whats already available.

12. Ensure that local community groups and VCS organisations being referred to have basic procedures in place for ensuring that vulnerable individuals are safe and, where there are safeguarding concerns, work with all partners to deal appropriately with issues.

13. Check that community groups and VCS organisations have appropriate policies and procedures in place, support groups to work towards this standard before referrals are made to them.

14. Support local groups to act in accordance with information governance policies and procedures, ensuring compliance with the Data Protection Act.

D Work collectively with all local partners to ensure community groups are strong andsustainable

16. Encourage people who have been connected to community support through social prescribing to volunteer and give their time freely to others, in order to build their skills and confidence, and strengthen community resilience.

17. Encourage people, their families and carers to provide peer support and to do things together, such as setting up new community groups or volunteering.

18. Work closely with GP practices within the PCN to ensure that social prescribing referral codes are inputted to SystmOne and that the persons use of the NHS can be tracked, adhering to data protection legislation and data sharing agreements with relevantbodies (e.g. the Integrated Care Board (ICB)).

General Duties and Responsibilities

19. Work with your line manager to undertake continual personal and professional development, taking an active part in reviewing and developing the roles and responsibilities.

20. Work with your line manager to access regular clinical supervision, to enable you to deal effectively with the difficult issues that people present. Miscellaneous

21. Work as part of the team to seek feedback, continually improve the service and contribute to business planning.

22. Adhere to organisational policies and procedures including (but not limited to) confidentiality, data protection, safeguarding, lone working and health and safety.

23. To undertake any roles or tasks that are consistent with the level of the post and fall within the scope of the role, thereby ensuring that the overall business and operational priorities of the project are delivered in a timely and effective manner. Whilst every effort has been made to outline all the main duties and responsibilities of the post, a document such as this does not permit every item to be specified in detail. Also the post holder may, from time to time, be asked to undertake other reasonable duties commensurate with the grading of the post.

In addition to undertaking the duties as outlined above, the post holder will be expected to fully adhere to the following:

1. Equality Act in accordance with the organisations Equality Policy, which is designed to prevent discrimination of any kind, and ensure equality of opportunity is a key principle that is continually embraced.

2. Operational Ensure that all duties are carried out in line with the organisations health and safety, operational, performance management, personnel, data protection, and financial regulations policies and procedures.

3. Corporate Image Adopt a professional image at all times. Adhere to and understand working practices as part of a quality assured organisation.

4. Confidentiality Maintain absolute confidentiality with regard to the organisations information and procedures, inparticular following guidelines set for Information Governance and GDPR.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• Good standard of education, educated to GCSE standard
• Computer user qualification, or able to demonstrate competence
• Keyboard skills
• Excellent telephone manner
• High standard of communication and interpersonal skills
• Clear and legible handwriting

Desirable

• Previous experience of reception and clerical work
• Familiar with Microsoft Word
• Experience of data inputting (desirable)
• Experience of GP practice work (desirable)
• Experience of working within a team

Personal Qualities

Essential

• Ability to work without daily supervision
• Confident, not obviously shy
• Team player, helpful and friendly
• Enthusiastic and a desire to learn
• Able to work at any practice site
• Flexibility to cover for colleagues
• Able to cope and remain calm in patient facing duties
• Understands and adheres to code of confidentiality
• Committed to work part of a team
• An ability to remain calm at all times even in demanding situations

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Employer details

Employer name

Broom Lane Medical Centre

Address

70 Broom Lane

Rotherham

South Yorkshire

S60 3EW

Employer's website

https://www.drpatelandpartners.co.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)