West Northamptonshire Council
Maternity Cover Public Health Practitioner - Inclusion Health
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If you're passionate about improving mental health and reducing health inequalities, this is an opportunity to lead meaningful public health work that makes a lasting difference to communities across West Northamptonshire.
Within our Inclusion Health Portfolio, we are committed to improving mental wellbeing, preventing suicide, reducing health inequalities and ensuring people can access the support, opportunities and services they need to live healthier lives. Working alongside partners across health, local government, community safety and the voluntary sector, we tackle some of the most complex challenges facing our communities and strive to create healthier, safer and more resilient places to live.
We're looking for an experienced Public Health Practitioner to join us on a 12 month maternity cover contract. This role will lead on a portfolio of work focused primarily on public mental health and suicide prevention, whilst also supporting wider inclusion health priorities, workplace wellbeing programmes and our system wide approach to tackling the underlying causes of serious violence.
This is an opportunity to step into an established and impactful portfolio where you'll work with a wide range of partners to influence strategy, commission and deliver evidence based interventions, and help improve outcomes for some of our most vulnerable residents. You'll play a key role in ensuring important programmes continue to make a positive impact, while helping shape future approaches to mental health, wellbeing and prevention across the area.
As part of a supportive and experienced Public Health Team, you'll have the opportunity to work on high profile priorities that span mental health, inclusion health, community safety and health improvement. The role offers both strategic and operational responsibility, giving you the chance to work at the heart of a service dedicated to improving lives and creating lasting change for local communities.
Our Benefits
You can also see our full list of employee benefits on our careers site here: Why you should work for us | West Northamptonshire Council.
What will you be doing?
As our Public Health Practitioner, you'll play a leading role in delivering programmes that improve mental health and wellbeing across West Northamptonshire while supporting wider inclusion health priorities.
You Will
- Lead the delivery of public mental health and suicide prevention initiatives, helping to improve wellbeing and reduce mental health inequalities across local communities.
- Work with health, community and voluntary sector partners to develop and implement evidence based mental health interventions and preventative approaches.
- Provide operational leadership for the local Violence Reduction Unit and Community Safety Partnership, supporting a trauma informed approach to tackling the underlying causes of serious violence.
- Lead targeted inclusion health initiatives that improve outcomes for marginalised communities, including people experiencing homelessness, vulnerable migrants, sex workers and Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities.
- Drive workplace wellbeing programmes that promote positive mental health, physical activity and preventative health approaches.
- Work with partners across the NHS, local government and community sector to commission, deliver and evaluate public health programmes and interventions.
- Use evidence, intelligence and local insight to shape programmes, influence decision making and identify opportunities for improvement.
- Represent Public Health at multi agency partnerships, forums and strategic meetings.
- Support the wider Public Health Team to deliver shared priorities and improve health outcomes across West Northamptonshire.
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About you
We're looking for a confident and experienced public health professional with a strong background in public mental health, mental wellbeing, suicide prevention or closely related areas of health improvement.
You'll be comfortable working across organisations, building productive partnerships and managing projects that deliver measurable outcomes. You'll be equally confident discussing strategic priorities with senior stakeholders as you are working alongside delivery partners and community organisations to turn ideas into action.
Most importantly, you'll bring the credibility, experience and confidence needed to step into a maternity cover role and maintain continuity across a well established portfolio of work. We are ideally seeking candidates with a minimum of two years' practical public health experience and experience of delivering work within public mental health and/or serious violence prevention.
You'll Bring
- Experience working within Public Health, the NHS, local government, the voluntary sector or a related setting.
- Strong knowledge of public mental health, health improvement and reducing health inequalities.
- Experience of developing and delivering evidence based public health programmes and interventions.
- Excellent partnership working skills and experience of working across multiple agencies and sectors.
- Strong project management and organisational skills with the ability to manage competing priorities.
- Excellent communication and influencing skills, including presenting complex information to a range of audiences.
- A degree or postgraduate qualification relevant to Public Health, or equivalent experience.
- A proactive and evidence based approach to delivering public health programmes and interventions.
Why Apply?
This role offers the opportunity to make a genuine difference to people's lives through work that improves mental health, reduces inequalities and supports some of the most vulnerable communities across West Northamptonshire.
You'll work on programmes that influence population wellbeing, support suicide prevention, promote healthier workplaces and help create joined up approaches to reducing serious violence. The role provides a unique opportunity to work across local government, the NHS, community safety partnerships and the voluntary sector, giving you exposure to influential system wide public health work.
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As a maternity cover opportunity, this role also offers an excellent chance to broaden your public health experience, gain exposure to a diverse Inclusion Health portfolio and further develop your partnership working, commissioning and project delivery skills within a supportive and experienced Public Health Team.
At West Northamptonshire Council, we are committed to helping colleagues grow and develop their careers. You'll work alongside experienced public health professionals, build valuable networks across multiple organisations and gain experience that can support future progression within public health, commissioning, partnerships and wider leadership roles.
Whilst this is a fantastic development opportunity, due to the nature of a contract cover role, we do need someone who can quickly establish themselves within the role and maintain momentum across an active portfolio. We're therefore looking for an experienced practitioner who can confidently build relationships, take ownership of projects and lead key areas of work from the outset.
About Us
At West Northants Council, it’s about our people. People who thrive with ambition, bubble with new ideas, demand better ways of working, caring about every detail, and who never shy away from a challenge. Our culture is a gateway for new experiences. A place to forge new opportunities. To empower you in your career and unite you with like-minded people.
Our vision is ‘to make West Northants a great place to live, work, visit and thrive’. We truly stand by this and work hard every day to make this a reality. Our corporate values, THRIVE, stand for: Trust, High Performance, Respect, Innovate and Empower, they underpin everything we do and how we deliver services.
We are committed to ensuring diversity, equality, equity, and inclusion is woven into the fabric of WNC and everything we do, to enable all colleagues to develop and maximize their full potential. We are a disability confident employer, a member of the Armed Forces Covenant, and a Care Leaver Covenant partner
The following film was created by us to communicate our intentions - watch WNC colleagues explain what DEI means to us.
If you need additional support or reasonable adjustments during the application process, including needing the job description in another format or language, please email careers@westnorthants.gov.uk for support.
Please note we reserve the right to close the advert early if we receive a high volume of suitable applications, so we recommend applying as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.
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