Family Nurse

Job responsibilities

The Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) is a national evidence- based programme. The aim of the programme is to improve the antenatal health, child health and development and parents economic self-sufficiency in disadvantaged young families.

This role is responsible for delivering the FNP intensive, preventive home visiting programme to vulnerable, hard to reach young women who are expecting their first baby. The post holders will be required to develop high-level generalist and specialist skills to work within the clinical methods of the structured programme. Family nurses will be expected to develop therapeutic relationships with clients and work intensively within complex family situations to achieve the expected outcomes of the programme.

This is a demanding specialist role requiring high levels of professional skills and practice and the ability to work as part of a team.

Duties and Responsibilities:

1. To recruit and engage eligible, hard-to-reach pregnant young women to the FNP programme.
2. To use programme materials and methods in the clients homes in order to achieve the following;

Improve the outcomes of pregnancy,

Improve childrens health and development by enabling parents to provide more sensitive and competent care of them; and

Improve parental life-course by helping parents plan future pregnancies, complete their education, and find work.

1. To work therapeutically with a range of family members to promote behaviour change and positive outcomes for children and families.
2. To take a lead professional role when required where children and young people with additional needs require an integrated package of support from more than one practitioner/service.
3. Through continuous monitoring and engagement in reflective supervision, to ensure that expertise in clinical methods are developed and maintained, that the service offered is of high quality and the programme is implemented with fidelity.
4. To work in collaboration with local statutory and mainstream services to ensure that families become confident in accessing a range of other universal health and support services and are ready to graduate from the programme when the child is two years old.

Professional

The Family Nurse will:

1. Undertake home visits in accordance with the FNP model.

2. Use high level interpersonal and communication skills to provide and receive complex and often highly sensitive information. Use strengths based, solution focused strategies and motivational interviewing skills to enable families to develop behaviour change strategies.

3. Utilise specialist knowledge acquired through the FNP learning programme, events and other study, together with reflections on experience, to deliver the FNP programme effectively.

4. Work effectively in potentially highly distressing or highly emotional circumstances, e.g. safeguarding children or family breakdown.

5. Develop therapeutic relationships, requiring in-depth mental attention and concentration for extended periods, and promote adaptive behaviour change in the family home and other environments.

6. Use the six FNP domains as a framework for programme delivery.

7. Use professional and clinical judgement to undertake detailed assessments of clients and their families and analyse complex family situations in order to develop appropriate clinical interventions.

8. Actively engage and work with fathers and other members of the extended family to achieve positive outcomes for children.

9. Apply knowledge and skills to a range of clinical and family situations.

10. Work within the FNP model to initiate, plan and co-ordinate clients care in consultation and collaboration with other professionals and agencies involved in providing services to women and their families. This includes initiating CAF and taking lead professional role where required.

11. At all times keep the safety of the baby and the young person in mind, and work within local safeguarding policies as appropriate.

12. Act on own interpretation of assessed clinical situation within the home setting. Able to refer client onto other specialist services as required on own authority.

13. Contribute to the delivery of the Healthy Child Programme (HCP), including professional assessments of childrens growth, development and language skills.

14. Positively and effectively represent the vision and principles of the FNP programme in actions and communications to internal and external clients, stakeholders and services.

15. Manage own workload by working independently within appropriate occupational guidelines, referring to FNP Lead where appropriate.

16. Act on own interpretation of assessed clinical situation within the home setting. Able to refer client onto other specialist services as required on own authority.

17. Visit clients over a wide geographical area and within flexible working hours, this may include following families to neighbouring Primary Care trust/local authorities to enable them to continue to benefit from the programme.

18. Propose changes to working practices or procedures for own work area as role evolves.

19. Complete full, accurate and contemporaneous records.

20. Create regular reports on local site replication performance for the programme board

21. Analyse reports on data for service development and develop quality improvement measures to assure data quality, completeness and accuracy, as well as improvements in programme delivery.

22. Develop systems for user involvement and support clients to offer feedback on the service received, integrating this into local or national improvement measures.

23. Develop local procedures for FNP, taking into account FNP National Unit guidance.

24. Be aware of, inform and abide by, provider services approved policies, standards and quality assurance initiatives.

Administrative

The Family Nurse will:

1. Provide timely and accurate data to monitor programme fidelity and for research purposes.

2. Maintain own caseload files and have good keyboard skills.

3. Input FNP data into Open Exeter database and produce individual reports relating to own caseload to monitor programme fidelity

4. Use computer software to create reports for other professionals and safeguarding meetings as required.

5. Utilise FNP resources to plan for visits and develop packages of materials for these.

Please see attached Full Job Description.

Relationships

Essential

• If you are related to a director or have a relationship with a director or employee of an appointing organisation, please state the relationship.

Qualifications

Essential

• Nursing or midwifery qualifications and registered with the NMC
• Degree level or equivalent professional qualification

Desirable

• Masters level education

Right to Work

Essential

• Do you currently have the unrestricted right to work in the UK?
• If appointed, will you require sponsorship under a UK work visa route (now or in the future)?
• Please note that sponsorship is not available for all roles. Sponsorship will only be considered where the post meets the relevant UK immigration requirements and where the organisation determines that sponsorship is appropriate for the role.

Experience

Essential

• Attachment theory
• Self-efficiency theory
• Human ecology theory
• Behavioural change theory
• Understand the difference between advice giving
• and motivational approaches
• Has some knowledge of the research base of FNP
• Willingness to undertake personal study to develop understanding of a range of clinical areas
• National and local safeguarding policies

Desirable

• Parent/infant mental health

Skills and Knowledge

Essential

• Demonstrable experience of working with families in deprived communities.
• Demonstrable experience of midwifery, child health, public health, home visiting.
• Clinical supervision
• Working with children & families
• Able to manage strong emotions, sensitive issues and undertake courageous conversations
• Able to develop supportive, trusting and respectful relationships.
• Able to work effectively in a team, supporting others and challenging colleagues views and attitudes when necessary.
• Able to sensitively provide anticipatory guidance to parents.
• Able to manage exposure to distressing life events and stressful complex partnerships.
• Highly reflective and able to learn from experiences.
• Willingness to prepare for and engage in clinical and managerial supervision.
• Able to assess a situation, set priorities and problem solve quickly and effectively.
• Able to communicate clearly and sincerely both verbally and in writing.
• Exceptional communication, facilitative and
• motivating skills.
• Able to work effectively with diverse groups.
• Basic computer skills to create reports, use email, read excel spread sheets etc.
• Able to analyse numerical data

Desirable

• Working with young people
• Attachment theory
• Self-efficiency theory
• Human ecology theory
• Behavioural change theory
• Motivational interviewing
• Counselling

Job Specific Requirements

Essential

• The ability to travel independently across the Trust
• The ability to work flexibly in accordance with service needs
• Committed to principles of FNP and a strong desire to see it succeed.
• Tenacious and persistent.
• Resilient.
• Empathic and non-judgemental.
• Warmth and flexibility.
• Self-awareness
• Pursues own personal growth.
• Has a learning style which readily accommodates skills practice and role play.

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.

Certificate of Sponsorship

Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).

From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).

UK Registration

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).