Homeless Hospital Discharge Team Lead

Fulfil your potential in hospitals that make history:

Charing Cross, Hammersmith, St Mary's, Queen Charlotte's & Chelsea and Western Eye.

With five world-renowned hospitals, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust is full of opportunity if you are looking to develop your healthcare career.

We are an NHS Trust of approximately 16,000 people, providing care for over a million and a half patients from north west London and beyond every year.

We have a rich heritage and an ambitious vision for the future of our patients and local communities.

With our partners, Imperial College London, and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, we form Imperial College Academic Health Science Centre, one of 6 academic health science centres in the UK, working to ensure the rapid translation of research for better patient care and excellence in education.

We are proud of our heritage in innovation and we are early adopters of new insights in technologies, techniques and treatments for improving health.

Job overview

Are you a motivated, dynamic, and enthusiastic registered nurse or occupational therapist with significant experience of working with people that are homeless or rough sleeping?

If so, we have an exciting opportunity for you to be involved in our specialist Homeless Health team working with a diverse client group across three hospital sites. We have two Band 7 posts within the service, a part time GP, a team-leader and 3 homeless health housing coordinators.

The Homeless Health Service provides enhanced inpatient care, and ensures safe, and sustainable hospital discharges that meets the needs of patient's currently experiencing homelessness.

The service aims to:

• Increase GP registration amongst the homeless population thereby reducing delayed discharges and improving access to primary healthcare.
• Increase the number of homeless people able to understand and manage their health and wellbeing independently, through improved co-ordination, access to education and prevention and the encouragement of self-care.
• Increase the number of service users with deteriorating conditions who are recognised early and linked into primary care and other services.
• Reduce homeless service users being admitted/re-admitted to hospital.
• Decrease A&E attendance and hospital admission for "hard-to-reach" homeless people and frequent attenders.
• Reduce LLOS for homeless people through early identification and expert case management.

Main duties of the job

• You will contribute senior clinical knowledge and expertise in this specialist area through your clinical practice and through education and training.
• You be a role model for inclusion health practice in the organisation.
• You will line manage the Housing Officers in the team.
• A strong understanding of how self-neglect is part of homelessness, safeguarding and the complexities of undertaking mental capacity assessments in inclusion health groups is desirable.
• Experience within drug and alcohol services would also be beneficial.
• A positive, can do 'attitude', a commitment to changing care for this extremely vulnerable patient group, and a desire to communicate with a wide variety of partners and stakeholders is essential.

Working for our organisation

At Imperial College Healthcare you can achieve extraordinary things with extraordinary people, working with leading clinicians pushing boundaries in patient care.

Become part of a vibrant team living our values - expert, kind, collaborative and aspirational. You'll get an experience like no other and will fast forward your career.

Benefits include career development, flexible working and wellbeing, staff recognition scheme. Make use of optional benefits including Cycle to Work, car lease schemes, season ticket loan or membership options for onsite leisure facilities.

We are committed to equal opportunities and improving the working lives of our staff and will consider applications to work flexibly, part time or job share. Please talk to us at interview.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The full job description provides an overview of the key tasks and responsibilities of the role and the person specification outlines the qualifications, skills, experience and knowledge required. For both overviews please view the Job Description attachment with the job advert.

Person specification

Education/ qualifications

Essential criteria

• Nursing or Occupational Therapy qualification
• At least degree level education or equivalent
• Post graduate qualification in a relevant clinical discipline
• NMC approved mentorship course.

Desirable criteria

• Leadership training
• Formal training in motivational interviewing skills
• Cultural competence training.

Experience

Essential criteria

• Extensive clinical experience in a relevant discipline.
• Extensive experience of working with patients who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.
• Experience of working successfully with patients with non-engagement issues.
• Experience of multidisciplinary working.
• Experience in quality improvement in an NHS context
• Experience of monitoring team performance against key performance indicators
• Experience of working successfully with challenging behaviour.
• Extensive experience of managing patients with communication barriers and disabilities.
• Extensive experience of managing patients with mental capacity and/or safeguarding issues.
• Experience of delivering harm reduction interventions.
• Experience of suicide prevention practice.
• Experience of delivering clinical audits.
• Experience of delivering successful partnership working

Desirable criteria

• Experience of regularly using motivational interviewing techniques.
• Experience of managing and directing the work of a multidisciplinary team.
• Experience of managing staff from other organisations
• Experience of independently producing reports on team activity and performance.

Please ensure you check your emails regularly as this is how we will communicate with you throughout the recruitment process. If you are shortlisted you will be contacted by email and text message (if you provide a mobile contact number).

Employer certification / accreditation badges

Applicant requirements

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Documents to download

• Job description (PDF, 419.0KB)
• FRF Form (PDF, 73.5KB)
• Our Strategy 2023-25 (PDF, 230.4KB)