Multi Professional Approved Clinician MPAC
Livewell Southwest
Plymouth, PL4 7PY
Salary
£79,504 to £91,609
Contract
Permanent
Hours
Not specified
Closing date
17 September 2026
17 days left
Job description
Approved Clinician & Multi-Professional Approved Clinician MPAC Band 8C Adult Mental Health Rehabilitation Services Livewell Southwest Hours: 30 hours...
The Role Lead, Decide, Transform
As an Approved Clinician you will hold a pivotal leadership position across the recovery inpatient pathway, with responsibility that goes far beyond individual caseload management.
You will
Provide Exercise Consultant-Level Clinical Authority
Act as Responsible Clinician (RC) for patients detained under the Mental Health Act
Hold full accountability for complex, high-risk clinical decisions and outcomes
Lead on assessment, formulation, and delivery of highly specialised interventions
Provide expert evidence at tribunals, courts, and statutory hearings
Lead Recovery Focused Care
Clinically lead care within male step-down beds at The Cove
Promote trauma informed, person centred & evidence-based practice
Support patients to achieve meaningful recovery goals and increased independence
Work collaboratively with families, carers and partner agencies
Facilitate successful discharge planning and community reintegration
Work across the Mental health System
Develop strong partnerships with Community Mental Health Teams
Maintain effective links with acute inpatient services
Collaborate with housing providers, social care and voluntary sector partners
Support seamless care pathways and effective patient flow
Contribute to pathway development across inpatient and community services
All staff are expected to be able and willing to work across a 7 day service.
Please note that we may close the job advertisement earlier than the specified deadline.
- *For Full JD please see attached documents
Provide strategic professional leadership across teams and
services.
Lead workforce development strategy.
Design and deliver specialist education and training.
Create a high-performance, psychologically safe culture
aligned with organisational values.
Promote the workplace as a learning environment, promoting
learning opportunities for all staff and encourage enquiry both within and
external to the team/organisation.
Influence senior stakeholders including Executive Directors
and system partners.
Contribute to a safe working environment for both the
person, carer and staff.
Organise meetings/groups to support clinical work and CPD.
Practice autonomously, demonstrating a self-directed
approach to the delivery of high quality, safe and effective care within the
context of a multi-disciplinary team.
The post holder will ensure that personal practice and the
practice of those s/he supervises adheres to relevant Codes of Conduct,
legislation and policies and procedures.
Work with the Executive Directors and Clinical Director to
deliver the clinical standards, clinical quality objectives and priorities, in
partnership promoting a service model which is clinically led and operationally
supported.
Contribute to enabling other staff, service users and carers
from diverse backgrounds to flourish by working to create a psychologically
safe environment.
Contribute to service line financial planning and resource
allocation decisions.
Lead on identifying efficiency, productivity and value-based
care opportunities. As a senior leader in the service, we expect you to
contribute to maintaining the financial viability of the service including
where necessary looking at efficiencies and income generation.
Ensure that the service delivers evidence-based practice
interventions within budget, and to have joint responsibility with professional
and managerial peers to maintain a healthy budget on a consistent basis.
Have a personal duty of care to ensure all equipment is used
safely and effectively, following manufacturers instructions, immediately
reporting any defects in accordance with local procedures. To be mindful to the
overall environment reporting appropriately all health and safety concerns.
In the absence of suitable materials to develop resources
such as information leaflets, pathways, self-help booklets, assessment forms,
clinical tools and guidelines to support such service practice development.
Provide strategic oversight of clinical governance, quality
and safety across the service.
Lead serious incident reviews and organisational learning.
Liaise with MHA office to ensure all paperwork related to a
patients detention under the MHA (1983) is up to date, correct and reflects
their current legal status.
Engage in CPD in line with requirements for AC/RC role and
Professional registration.
Actively participate in development activities including
appraisal, clinical supervision and peer review of own practice.
Practice effective time management to respond to competing
priorities, balancing a clinical caseload and other responsibilities such as
team education, service development and research.
Provide clinical leadership to ensure effective MDT based
practice leading to sustainable, safe and effective service delivery.
Responsible for documenting plans of care and for ensuring
that plans remain current and ensuring high standards of record keeping.
Seek support and advice from senior clinicians in respect of
issues or challenges with individual patients.
Ensure compliance with regulatory standards (CQC, NICE) at
service and system level.
Exercise full Responsible Clinician duties with authority
over complex, high-risk and high-profile cases.
Lead on reducing admissions, improving flow and developing
alternatives to inpatient care.
Drive patient-centred innovation and co-production
approaches.
Demonstrate the eight core competencies of an Approved
Clinician and exercise the role of Responsible Clinician adhering to the MHA
and MHA Code of Practice.
Making highly skilled evaluations and decisions about
treatment options, taking into consideration both theoretical and therapeutic
models, and factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have
shaped the individual, family, or group.
Contributing to decisions about admission to other services
through the completion of pre-admission assessments. This includes reducing the
risk of admission through crisis care offers, responding to risk proactively to
reduce hospital attendance and reviewing clinical risk formulation to manage
patients safely in the community.
Provide expert testimony at tribunals and courts as a senior
authoritative voice.
Provision of statutory reports as and when required.
Exercise all responsibilities in statutory decision making
in regard to patient care.
Identify patients that may require Mental Health Act
Assessment and coordinate assessments.
Provide advanced specialist and highly expert advice,
guidance and consultation contributing directly to clients diagnosis,
formulation, and intervention plan.
Assess health care needs, based on highly developed skills
and knowledge.
Plan and coordinate the physical healthcare needs of
patients.
Plan, develop and manage specialist packages of care, using
PCF.
Draw on a diverse range of knowledge in making decisions to
determine evidence-based therapeutic interventions.
Provide highly specialist advanced practice level
contribution to risk assessment, risk management and the development of
multidisciplinary treatment plans and take responsibility for ensuring
necessary documentation is completed as a means to improve health, safety and
improve practice.
Use professional judgement in managing highly complex and
unpredictable care events and capture the learning from these experiences.
Lead formal MDT reviews for patients and lead/contribute
when necessary to multi-disciplinary and agency meetings.
Support service users to make informed choices about their
plan of care.
Ensure that health promotion and prevention activities
factor in an individuals plan of care.
Identify, minimise and report risks of danger, harm or
abuse.
Responsible for ensuring the delivery of high standards of
care through employing appropriate clinical governance frameworks.
Share information relating to assessment and care plans with
clients, carers and families in a responsive, empathic manner.
Ensure a safety culture which assures adherence to
organisations values.
Providing an evidence-based treatment pathway for Adults of
Working Age.
Ensure that all services provided are acceptable and
accessible to the diverse communities which make up the clients of this
service.
Ensuring an equitable service which meets patients needs
and develop additional treatment packages within the treatment strategy to meet
those needs.
Where decisions need to be made about psychotropic
medication outside the competency of the post holder, this should be referred
to a medical Approved Clinician (AC) who will assume responsibility for that
decision in collaboration with the Responsible Clinician (RC) or to another
appropriately competent prescriber.
Support the Medical Director, senior managers and
directorate manager on information to assure that learning arises from patient
feedback, compliments, complaints, concerns and untoward incidents.
Responsibility for implementation of policy and/or service
developments.
Lead major service transformation programmes across recovery
services.
Shape and implement Trust and system-wide strategy aligned
with NHS priorities.
Livewell Southwest is an independent, award-winning social enterprise delivering integrated health and social care services across Plymouth, South Hams, and West Devon, with specialist services in parts of Devon and Cornwall. Our teams work in community hospitals, GP practices, sports centres, and health hubs.
As an organisation with a strong social conscience we are guided by our values, kindness, respect, inclusivity, ambition, responsibility, and collaboration. We focus on transforming services to ensure sustainability, while empowering staff and those we serve.
We involve the people we care for, along with their families and carers, in shaping the care they receive, striving to deliver the right care at the right time and place. Centering our work on individual needs helps people lead healthy, independent lives.
We prioritise employees' development, offering protected CPD time, training pathways, leadership programs, and funding for qualifications like the Care Certificate and Nurse Training Scholarships. Our induction and preceptorship programs ensure a smooth transition into our organisation.
Livewell Southwest values diversity and encourages applications from all sections of the community, including those with armed forces experience, lived experience of mental health, neuro-diverse conditions and learning disabilities. If you need assistance or reasonable adjustments during the application process, contact the Recruiting Manager listed in the job advert.
Qualifications
Essential
- Educated to master's level or significant relevant experience in relevant topic
- Postgraduate training to doctoral level (or equivalent), with substantial relevant experience in clinical, counselling, or forensic psychology as recognised by the BPS; or additional postdoctoral training in one or more specialist areas.
- Current professional registration
- Evidence of continued personal development.
- Trained in clinical supervision and the supervision of doctoral trainees
Desirable
- Trained in care co-ordination
- Registration with BPS
- Evidence of senior leadership training or equivalent experience
- Independent and supplementary prescribing qualification
- Trained and registered as an Approved Clinician
- Full and active Responsible Clinician qualification
Knowledge
Essential
- Expert knowledge in mental state and/or physical examination and assessment
- Extensive knowledge of current issues relating to health needs of patients in the field of practice, regionally and nationally
- To have an applied working knowledge of Mental Health Legislation, related codes of practice and national and local policy and guidance including MHA/MCA and associated guidance (NICE) and national policy.
- Advanced knowledge in the psycho-social treatment. Highly developed knowledge of the care of difficult to treat groups e.g. dual diagnoses, additional disabilities or severely challenging behaviour. forensic MH patients, including theory, evidence based and application of such knowledge.
- Advanced knowledge of cultural and diversity issues related to the assessment and treatment of good quality MH care.
- Audit and research methodology
- Detailed understanding of Safeguarding and its application in practice.
- Clinical Risk Assessment and Management and its application in practice.
- Understanding of psychological models of care and treatment (depending on specialist area)
- Knowledge and theory of clinical leadership.
- Knowledge and skills of Clinical Governance and the Quality Improvement agenda
- Demonstrate evidence of leading clinical strategic change initiatives
- Evidence of previous / current advanced clinical practice in Community mental health Service.
Desirable
- Post qualification training, e.g.: Complex trauma
- Structured clinical judgment risk assessment.
- Assessment & treatment of offending behaviours, MH law
- Significant experience in Transforming Care and Quality Improvement in this strategic direction of national policy.
- Experience of organisational change management and fostering a culture of patient safety
- Demonstrate awareness and knowledge of wider patient experience agenda.
Experience
Essential
- Experience of working as an AC to meet the requirements for accreditation via the portfolio route.
- Extensive experience working with patients with complex needs in the specialist field
- Extensive experience working with patients who display risk behaviours
- Clinical risk assessment and management and its application in practice
- Demonstration of using expert practice in a governed therapy/advanced clinical qualification
- Demonstration of advanced transformational leadership knowledge, skills and competencies
- Able to demonstrate having worked in an autonomous expert role utilising clinical assessment skills in highly complex situations
- Extensive experience in leading MDT/risk and other forms of meetings
- Extensive experience of working as a senior practitioner across a range of mental health settings.
- Experience of taking full clinical responsibility for patients / service users as an AC with a range of serious mental health problems within the context of multidisciplinary care including those with personality disorder / complex trauma.
- Experience of working with a wide variety of patients / service users presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity, including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse.
- Significant experience and expertise in the training of others.
- Significant experience in providing supervision and consultations to staff using a range of clinical models.
- Quality improvement activities
- Have engaged in research and clinical audit activity
- Designed and delivered teaching or education packages to patients, carers and health care staff
- Detailed knowledge of policy, learning disability, mental health and substance misuse Care co-ordination experience
Desirable
- Experience of representing the organisation/professional regionally/nationally
- Recognised locally / nationally and have a proven track record of work and expertise within your field of practice and specifically with this population. This will be evidenced by roles held (including voluntary positions), publications, teaching and links to professional and special interest groups.
Specific Skills
Essential
- Expertise in the assessment of mental health including a bio-psycho-social-cultural; approach.
- Ability to understand and assess a range of clinical risk issues with specific focus on risk of violence to others and risk of deliberate self-harm.
- Expert knowledge/awareness of relevant MH, MCA & DOLS legislation.
- Expertise in understanding the care coordination process alongside coordinating complex care packages.
- Communicate highly complex, highly sensitive and highly contentious information effectively, to a wide range of people
- Undertake complex multiagency working and liaise with multiple systems
- Ability to work within a team and when appropriate lead a team as well as work independently.
- To be able to produce highly complex written information in a variety of formats (e.g., letters, reports) to a range of audiences (patient, family, courts)
- Ability to interpret and analyse a range of highly complex data and highly risk information in order to identify a range of solutions to complex clinical or organisational problems.
- Experience in managing a complex caseload.
- Ability to assume leadership responsibilities alongside ability to lead cultural and organisational improvement.
- Well-developed prioritisation, planning and negotiation skills to manage team and caseload needs
Additional Requirements
Essential
- Able to work in accordance with the organisations Values and Behaviours.
- As well as being able to demonstrate respect and compassion, build trust, remain responsive, listen.
- Lead with positivity and dignity, support, engage and encourage others. Value learning and innovation.
- Able to engage with vulnerable people and work effectively in highly distressing and challenging circumstances.
- Able to work flexibly and co-operatively as part of a team
- Able to use own initiative and make decisions independently
- Committed to continual quality and service improvement
- Self-aware and committed to professional and personal development.
- Able to accept and respond positively to feedback from supervision
- Ability to travel independently in accordance with Trust policies and service need.
- This post is subject to a satisfactory Disclosure and Barring Service check.
How to apply
Applications are handled entirely by the employer on the original advert. We do not collect CVs, supporting statements or application data.
Provenance
Source
NHS Jobs
First seen
17 August 2026
Last checked
19 August 2026
Salary, closing date and description are taken from the employer's advert. The original advert always takes precedence.
About the employer
NHS organisation
This listing was structured from NHS Jobs. Vacancy details and the application process remain the responsibility of the original source.
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