Do you want to be part of a new, innovative and exciting service that will support children and young people with acute mental health problems in their homes?

This new service will operate across Hampshire, Dorset and the Isle of Wight, and will be delivered by four NHS Trusts who will each provide a Closer2Home team for their local area. The teams will work in an integrated way, supporting one another to provide the service with a shared management structure overseeing the service as a whole.

The Closer2Home teams will work together to deliver a specialist service to help young people remain at home who otherwise would have been admitted to an inpatient hospital. The service will operate 365 days a year from 8am-8pm.

Joining now will give you a unique opportunity to help shape and develop the service from the outset.

The role

Working as a team, you and your colleagues you will be responsible for designing and delivering time-limited programmes of intensive home treatment to young people with a range of needs, who would otherwise have been admitted to hospital. The team will work collaboratively with community CAMHS, children’s services, colleagues involved in ‘transforming care,’ bed and case managers and local inpatient units; using an interagency approach to provide the best care for the young people.

The applicant will be expected to provide clinical leadership to their local Closer2Home team. Each team has been modelled to have an optimal number and skill mix of staff to effectively address the needs of the young people the service will support. The teams will be integrated in a Wessex & Dorset wide system of clinical and operational governance, a new infrastructure that will utilise robust pre-admission care-planning, a ‘single point of access' for intensive home treatment and inpatient services, goal-setting at admission and supported inpatient discharge.

This new service will be commissioned by the Wessex and Dorset Tier 4 CAMHS Provider Collaborative and provided by four NHS Trusts working together across Hampshire and Dorset:

• Dorset Healthcare University Foundation Trust
• Southern Health NHS Trust
• Solent NHS Trust
• Isle of Wight NHS Trust

Each Trust will have its own Closer2Home Team but the overall service will be coordinated and managed across the Provider Collaborative by a dedicated management team. Therefore, we will facilitate staff to work across the Trusts and within the Closer2Home teams to provide maximum flexibility for both staff and to meet the needs of the service. This will also result in increased opportunities to develop your career whilst working within the service.

To operate as one fully integrated team staff will be employed by one ‘host’ Trust but have honorary contractual agreements with the other Trusts to enable them to work across the whole service.

The service:

• Provide assessment and intensive support for young people with mental health needs who present high levels of risk
• Support assessment prior to admission to inpatient care (hospital), where required
• Deliver planned intensive home or community-based treatment services, as well as specialist intensive home treatment for young people whose needs exceed the threshold for Tier 3 CAMHS
• Support discharge services to facilitate timely discharge from hospital
• Support the reduction of health inequalities in children and young people mental health pathways

The service will focus on three main patient groups, which include:

• Young people who repeatedly harm themselves and/or make suicidal gestures; and who may also experience emotional lability and distress in relationships
• Young people with complex eating disorders, especially anorexia nervosa, who require intensive treatment
• Young people currently in Tier 4 mental health services who could be discharged or moved closer to home if there were increased support

Referrals to the service will be managed through the same processes and pathways used for Tier 4 inpatient services, so children and young people who previously required an inpatient stay can now also be considered for the Closer2Home service.

More Information

Please read the Additional (Candidate) Information or if you would like an informal chat to discuss the service or role further, please contact Georgia Marks (Clinical Lead) at georgia.marks@solent.nhs.uk