About this role
Job summary
Are you a qualified Health Visitor looking to make a lasting difference to the lives of children and families?
Join our Public Health Nursing team in Yeovil and play a key role in delivering the Healthy Child Programme, improving health outcomes, reducing inequalities, and providing early support to families across Somerset. You'll work as part of a collaborative service dedicated to helping children thrive and enabling families to achieve the best possible outcomes.
About the Role
As a Health Visitor, you will deliver specialist public health nursing services for children and families across your community. You'll assess needs, provide early intervention and preventative support, work closely with partner agencies, and help ensure families receive the right support at the right time.
Main duties of the job
How You'll Make a Difference
Deliver public health nursing services that promote the health, wellbeing and development of children and families.
Assess needs and develop tailored plans to provide effective support and intervention.
Build positive relationships with families, offering guidance, advice and practical support.
Work collaboratively with health, education, social care and voluntary sector partners.
Identify and respond to safeguarding concerns to help keep children safe.
Promote positive parenting, healthy lifestyles and improved outcomes through early intervention and prevention.
What You'll Bring
A recognised Health Visitor qualification and current professional registration.
Experience working with children, families and communities in a health or public health setting.
Strong knowledge of safeguarding, child protection and risk assessment processes.
The ability to manage a varied caseload and prioritise competing demands effectively.
Excellent communication and relationship-building skills.
Confidence working collaboratively with a wide range of professionals and partner organisations.
Applicants must have a full valid driving licence and have access to a car for work. If necessary, adjustments can be considered in line with the Equality Act 2010.
About us
At Somerset Council, we're a progressive organisation committed to improving lives and shaping better services for our communities. Based in one of England's most beautiful counties, it's a great place to build your career and enjoy an excellent quality of life.
30 days annual leave plus bank holidays, with the option to purchase additional leave.
Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS), one of the UK's most enhanced and secure pension schemes.
Flexible and hybrid working arrangements to support work-life balance, where service needs allow.
Health and wellbeing support, including access to confidential employee assistance services.
Paid volunteering opportunities, helping you make a difference both inside and outside of work.
We believe diversity makes us stronger and are committed to creating a workplace where everyone feels valued and respected. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and experiences, whose unique perspectives help us better serve the people of Somerset.
If you submit an application for this role via NHS Jobs, we will upload your details to our applicant tracking system. Please see our privacy statement in the link
Job description Job responsibilities
1. Responsible for ensuring the co-ordination and delivery of skilled, effective care to promote positive health and respond to identified, individual client and population/community needs. This will reflect the prime objective of tackling disadvantage and inequality to impact on the health divide and effectively participate in the mainstream development of Early Help Services to fully embrace the ethos of integrated care delivery.
2. Provide professional and team leadership to manage a defined team delivering care to a geographical caseload/population. Undertake an ongoing community health needs profile of the caseload identifying individual, family and community needs affecting health and social well-being, including Emotional Health Screening, assessing the need for specific services and ensuring that the appropriate level of interaction is provided and co-ordinated.
3. Work with vulnerable children and families in line with national and local policies relating to safeguarding children and provide specialist support and advice to children, families and schools regarding the health and wellbeing needs of children.
4. Work in partnership with other agencies, particularly health services, education and social care. Manage and co-ordinate programmes of intervention for a caseload made up of individual children and families, to plan, implement, monitor and review programmes of intervention based on identified individual health and social needs.
Key Responsibilities
5. Identify those children who are vulnerable and/or at risk from harm. Respond appropriately to incidents of actual or suspected abuse and to ensure that child protection practice is in line with local and national guidelines and policies and prioritise court reports and Child Protection documentation.
6. Attend professionally related working groups as appropriate, which are involved in developing and agreeing local policies, protocols and standard setting to identify and respond to local health needs. Participate in projects, pilots, research and audit as and when required by the Organisation.
7. Maintain a working knowledge of, and participate at a local level in, the delivery of public health targets, local delivery plan, business plan, benchmarking and governance plans and Childrens National Service Framework targets, ensuring that practice reflects their objectives.
8. Responsible for care plans/programmes delegated to members of the health visiting team, providing clear measurable outcomes and developing systems to review the effectiveness of care. Maintain communication through Healthy Child Meetings allocating work to appropriate professionals.
9. Work in partnership with families and other agencies to promote and support a healthy lifestyle and positive parenting. Develop, deliver and evaluate programmes of education and support to targeted individuals and groups within the community.
10. Provide safe and competent advice for individual clients receiving care for a condition for which the Health Visitor takes clinical responsibility. Prescribe from the Nurse Prescribers Formulary for District Nurses and Health Visitors, from the Nurse Prescribers Extended Formulary or to act as a supplementary prescriber, where appropriate qualifications have been achieved.
11. Investigate and report complaints and incidents at a team level (as appropriate) and in accordance with the Organisations complaints and incident reporting policies and complete risk assessment.
12. Offer advice, guidance and support to children and families to develop good practice and publicise the available areas of assistance.
13. Understand, uphold and promote the aims of the councils equality, diversity and inclusion policies; health, safety and wellbeing of self and others; and Organisational values in everything you do. Equality and Diversity practice covers both interaction with staff, service users and communities and includes challenging discrimination and promoting equality of opportunity for all.
Contacts & Relationships
Children, young people and families. Education Providers, Head Teachers and Schools. Community Services, Fire and Police. Public Health Directorate, Somerset CCG. Heads of Service, Children and Young People Provider Services and Locality Leads. Primary Care GP practices. Midwifery Services, Paediatric Services, Integrated Therapy Services. Voluntary Sector. External relationships with other agencies and Acute NHS Trusts.Communicate in person, face-to-face, in writing and, where appropriate, electronically with all the above contacts.
Establish clear lines of communication between all members of multi-agency and professional Primary Care teams, working collaboratively with all relevant health care professionals and agencies including Children Social care. Liaise with other agencies, professionals, organisations to keep them informed of service provision and with consent, advise on individual cases. Identify improvements to service provision, policies and procedures. Co-ordinate inter-agency/partnership working to enhance access to services and provide comprehensive service provision. Attend and contribute to Area team meeting monthly to facilitate effective communication within children and young peoples services.Resources
Manage the local team within the agreed resources (financial and personnel). This will include physical resources e.g. pharmaceutical items and efficient and effective use of staffing resources. Establish within available resources, specific interventions to enable early intervention. Ensure all loans of equipment are monitored and reviewed regularly in line with agreed protocols and guidelines, eg enuresis alarms, CONI equipment. Prioritise work and manage time effectively by utilising individuals skills, knowledge and competencies and co-ordinate monthly Team meetings as appropriate. Enable and support the development of skills and competencies of all members of the team through ongoing supervision, regular appraisal and the development of individual Personal Development Plans, including preceptorship and act as an assessor for pre/post registration students and providing community/public health knowledge. Deliver training programmes on behalf of the service to internal and external services as appropriate. Recommend and initiate improvements in service delivery to clients and to implement changes in practice, where appropriate. Provide and participate in clinical supervision on a regular basis as per policy and guidelines for best practice.Further information specific to this job
The successful candidate has a responsibility for promoting and safeguarding the welfare of the children and young people they are responsible for or come into contact with.
Somerset Council is subject to Part 7 of the Immigration Act (2016) and therefore the ability to speak fluent English will be an essential requirement for customer-facing roles.
This job requires a criminal background check (DBS) via the disclosure procedure.
Person Specification
Experience Essential
Leadership programme or prepared to undertake a course. Proven clinical and managerial leadership ability. Experience of managing a complex caseload and delivering specialist public health interventions. Experience of partnership working within a multi-agency environment. Experience of safeguarding children and supporting vulnerable families.
Personal Attributes Essential
Ability to organise and deliver education on a 1-1 or group setting. Required to have responsibility for a caseload and delegate appropriately, with ability to organise and prioritise workload. Ability to lead teams Public Health Nurses, Staff nurses and Assistant Practitioners. Report writing knowledge and skills. IT Competent. Maintain records as per NMC Guidelines/local policy. Audit and research skills. Ability to speak fluent English as stated in Part 7 of the Immigration Act (2016).
Qualifications Essential
Registered Health Visitor. Public Health Specialist Practitioner Degree or Post Graduate diploma (or equivalent qualification pre-1988). Evidence of continued professional development. Nurse Prescriber V100 Qualification or equivalent.
Knowledge and skills Essential
Knowledge of public health legislation, policy and best practice relating to children, families and early years services. Knowledge of safeguarding children procedures and multi-agency working arrangements. Demonstrate working knowledge of the Public Health and Preventative Strategy. Working knowledge of child protection procedures and policies.
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.
UK Registration
Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).
Employer details Employer name Somerset County Council
Address The Council Offices
Brympton Way
Yeovil
BA20 2HT
United Kingdom
Employer's website https://www.somerset.gov.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)