Care Navigator Service

The Care Navigator service in Manchester & Trafford is part of the Integrated Neighbourhood Teams. The service offers a community-facing service with a focus on delivering a seamless interface between hospital and community services, ensuring the people of Manchester have access to the right services at the right time in the right location.

About the Service

The Care Navigator service consists of non-clinical staff members, who work closely alongside existing services across hospital and community settings including health, social care, and Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) organisations. The service is managed and supported by the Integrated Neighbourhood Lead as part of the Integrated Neighbourhood Teams in Manchester. The Trafford Care Navigator service is part of the wider team and is managed by the Specialty Lead directly.

Responsibilities

• Care Navigators link directly with community-based services and are able to signpost and support people to access services in the community.
• They play a key role in the establishment and facilitation of the Coordinated Care Pathway (CCP) which involves supporting Neighbourhood Multi-agency Meetings (MAMs) and Multi-disciplinary meetings (MDTs).
• Proactively work together with services across boundaries to ensure people are kept in the community through supporting admission avoidance/prevention alongside community teams, admission deflection at the front door of hospitals, and facilitated discharge from the hospital wards.
• Champion a personalised case management approach, accessing multiple services to ensure a care navigation package for the patient encompasses all their needs for health and wellbeing.
• Gather information at the earliest opportunity and present this to clinicians to give them confidence and aid their decisions, helping prevent any unnecessary admissions to hospital.
• Promote access to relevant services and cascade information that aids the support of a patient's discharge as well as following this up in the community by either a phone call or face-to-face visit.
• Link patients directly into the Coordinated Care Pathway, engaging relevant health, social, and VCSE services, as well as signposting and linking people into services to support them in the community.
• Provide patient choice and ensure people and their carers have access to the most appropriate services at the right time in the right place and continue to monitor them and work with services to reduce the risk of deterioration and help prevent unnecessary hospital admissions.