Clinical Lead Paediatric Occupational Therapist

Whittington NHS Trust; London; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 50,000; Full time

Job summary

Whittington NHS Trust offers a dynamic opportunity for a Paediatric Occupational Therapist within a multidisciplinary team focused on children with Autism. This role involves leading service delivery and collaborating closely with diverse teams to ensure effective outcomes for young patients. The ideal candidate will bring specialization in pediatric care and a commitment to evidence-based practices.

Benefits

Flexible working patterns

Supportive work environment

Professional development and training opportunities

Qualifications

• Experience with children and young people in a clinical setting.
• Strong ability to develop multi-disciplinary clinical pathways.
• Extensive knowledge in safeguarding policies.

Responsibilities

• Lead Occupational Therapy provision for children at The Bridge School.
• Provide specialized assessment and treatment for children with complex needs.
• Support and mentor junior staff and contribute to service development.

Skills

Knowledge of Autism

Evidence-based intervention approaches

Leadership

Ability to work autonomously

Clinical assessment skills

Education

UK professional registration as an Occupational Therapist

Job description

Covid-19 Vaccination

Getting vaccinated, and getting a booster, remains the best defence against COVID-19.
We encourage and support staff to get COVID-19 vaccine and a booster dose as and when they are eligible.

Please note in order to progress your application, your data will be processed by our 3rd party recruitment providers - North London Partners Shared Service, who conduct recruitment activities on behalf of Whittington Health NHS Trust.

For our current apprenticeship vacancies, please go to https://www.gov.uk/apply-apprenticeship and use Keyword 'Whittington'

By applying for this role, you accept in the event you are successful that your personal data may be transferred from the Trust to another NHS organisation where your employment transfers within the NHS. This is in accordance with the streamlining programme which is aimed at saving you time and improving efficiencies within the NHS when your employment transfers.

Job overview

An exciting opportunity has arisen for an experienced, positive and creative Paediatric Occupational Therapist to join our Multidisciplinary Therapy Team. This is a newly created post with a strong emphasis on Team Work whilst reviewing and developing the service delivery model of Occupational Therapy at The Bridge School.

Islington Additional Needs and Disability Service (IANDS) provide a comprehensive community service to children and young people living or at school in Islington. The post holder will be responsible for providing an Occupational Therapy service for children with additional needs within The Bridge School.

The Bridge School is a provision for 4-19 year olds with significant complex needs, the majority of whom have a diagnosis of Autism. The post holder will be a clinical specialist within the area of autism as well as having specialist knowledge and experience in a wide range of conditions relevant to the specialist school aged population.

One key area of the role is to clinically support other members of the team and develop clinical services and pathways within this area. The post holder will work closely with other clinical leads in the service to support audit and research. The post holder will support the Team Leader in identifying clinical priorities and that appropriate packages of care are monitored and evaluated, ensuring good outcomes for children.

Main duties of the job

• To take responsibility for the day-to-day leadership of Occupational Therapy provision for children and young people attending The Bridge School, and be accountable for a designated area of work as agreed with the Head of Paediatric Therapy and Specialist School Nursing. Plan and organise this efficiently and effectively with regard to caseload management and use of time.

• To be an expert clinical resource for other members of staff with a strong focus on evidence based and neurodiverse affirming practice. This will include members of the specialist MDT, Children's Services managers, education staff and social care
• To undertake a clinical caseload review & to be responsible for the provision of highly specialised assessment, treatment and management of school age children and young people presenting with a with a wide variety of conditions
• To provide highly specialist advice and peer support to Occupational Therapy, nursing, medical, social care and educational colleagues in the overall management of the child presenting with complex problems in a range of pre-school, primary, secondary and community settings.
• Developing multi-disciplinary clinical pathways for Autistic children and young people and other conditions including chronic, complex conditions.

Refer to job description for further details

Working for our organisation

Whittington Health serves a richly diverse population and works hard to ensure that all our services are fair and equally accessible to everyone. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the way we look after our staff. We aim to employ a workforce which is as representative as possible of this population, so we are open to the value of differences in age, disability, gender, marital status, pregnancy and maternity, race, sexual orientation, and religion or belief. The Trust believes that as a public sector organisation we have an obligation to have recruitment, training, promotion and other formal employment policies and procedures that are sensitive to these differences. We think that by doing so, we are better able to treat our patients as well as being a better place to work.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

1. To be professionally and legally accountable for all aspects of own work, including management of patients in your care.

2. To complete a thorough review of current caseload and models of service deliver to ensure an equitable service to all

3. To ensure a high standard of clinical care for the patients under your management

4. To clinically lead a team of OTs including provision of a robust clinical supervision framework to more junior OT's and Therapy Assistants.

5. To work within a legal framework for those service users who lack the capacity to consent to treatment.

6. To have skills and experience in managing complex caseloads including those requiring manual handling support and specialist equipment

7. To manage clinical risk within own patient caseload and that of the team.

8. To engage the child, family and carers in OT intervention and consider co-production in service development.

9. To use evidence-based practice, audits, and published research including national and local clinical guidelines to inform own practice and that of the team. To have an advanced knowledge of national and local standards that may impact on own and the department's practice.

10. To ensure clinical policies are adhered to by a range of professionals including school staff

11. To work within Trust, Health Professions Council and Royal College of Occupational Therapy (RCOT) Standards of Practice. To adhere at all times to personal and professional standards which reflect credit on the profession and encourage others to do likewise.

12. To take a lead at clinical management meetings to ensure the delivery of a well co-ordinated multidisciplinary service including interprofessional / transdisciplinary working and delivery of integrated service.

13. To be responsible for undertaking risk assessments of patients under own care. Document the risk assessment on the appropriate form.

14. To maintain, develop and continually update highly specialist knowledge and own competency to practice through Continuous Professional Development (CPD) activities.

15. To maintain a portfolio, which reflects personal and professional development (clinical, managerial and leadership), complying with your agreed personal development plan.

16. To work collaboratively with multi-agency professionals to develop comprehensive support packages for children and their families living with complex disabling conditions, ensuring appropriate service provision in response to changing clinical and/or social situations, including transition stages.

17. To keep informed of activities in professional clinical groups relevant to area of Paediatric Occupational Therapy, to cascade information and incorporate standards into local practice as appropriate

18. To ensure full understanding of legal frameworks of formulating advice for EHC, to have robust evidence-based report writing skills and be able to contribute advice to inform a Tribunal Process as required.

Person specification

Knowledge

Essential criteria

• Knowledge of Autism and evidence based intervention approaches

Desirable criteria

• Leadership and Line management experience

Skills

Essential criteria

• Ability to work autonomously, acting decisively on behalf of self and others, setting own priorities

Desirable criteria

• Competent IT Skills

Knowledge

Essential criteria

• A wide range of clinical experience with children and young people including assessment, planning and co-ordinating treatment

SAFEGUARDING CHILDREN AND ADULTS

To comply with the Trust's Safeguarding Children and Adults policies, procedures and protocols. All individual members of staff (paid or unpaid) have a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults This will require you to:

• Ensure you are familiar with and comply with the London Child Protection Procedures and protocols for promoting and safeguarding the welfare of children and young people.

• Ensure you are familiar and comply with the London Multi Agency Safeguarding Vulnerable Adults Pan London Procedures.

• Ensure you are familiar and comply with local protocols and systems for information sharing.
• Know the appropriate contact numbers and required reporting lines.
• Participate in required training and supervision.
• Comply with required professional boundaries and codes of conduct

Whittington Health is committed to safeguarding all children and vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

Your application form -

1. Provide only business email address for your referees - we are unable to request references from yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail accounts.
2. Make sure you to include all evidence of where you meet the essential requirement on the jobs description as this forms the base of our shortlisting criteria.

Our processes -

1. Closing dates are given as a guide; we are within our right to close adverts early so please ensure you submit your application as soon as possible to avoid delay.
2. If you do not hear from us up to 3 weeks after the closing date of the job unfortunately this means you have not been successfully shortlisted for interview. If your require feedback on your application please contact the appointing manager detailed in the body of the advert.
3. Please check your emails regularly as all correspondence from us will be via trac.systems - occasionally these emails will go into your Junk folder.
4. Employment at Whittington Health is offered subject to successful completion of a 6 month probationary period for all staff with the exception of GMC Registered Doctors.

Other important information -

• Applications from job seekers who require sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. Before submitting your application and to avoid disappointment please check that you are eligible under the UKVI points based system.
• Applications are welcome from people wishing to job share or work flexible patterns. We are committed to equal opportunities.
• In submitting an application form, you authorise Whittington Health NHS Trust to confirm any previous NHS service details via the Inter Authority Transfer (IAT) process should you be appointed to the post.

If you are offered a role with one of the NLPSS partner trusts, as part of pre-employment checks your identity and right to work documentation will be verified remotely (in most circumstances), using a certified identity verification service provider TrustID. You will be asked to capture an image of the relevant documents as well as a "selfie" using your smartphone/tablet (if available) for facial matching. TrustID will also perform a digital address check using Trunarrative and Equifax, which is a soft check and does not leave a footprint on your credit rating. For more information, visit www.trustid.co.uk

Please note that during the recruitment process your Identity Documentation (i.e. passport, driving licence, visa, etc.) will be scanned using a device which recognises UV, Infrared and Machine Readable Zone security features of the documents provided

The Trust uses electronic new starter forms on Trac to collect personal details. Information collected is securely stored and used to set up the employee record on the ESR HR system.

We would welcome applications from individuals who are from underrepresented groups in the organisation

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

• Clinical Lead Occupational Therapist Job Description (PDF, 248.4KB)
• Clinical Lead Paediatric Occupational Therapist (PDF, 232.4KB)
• Whittington Probationary Policy (PDF, 298.0KB)
• Whittington Employment Promise (PDF, 22.4KB)