Wheelchair Therapist

Northumbria Group.; Seaton Delaval; Remote; GBP 40,000 - 48,000; Full time

Job summary

Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust is seeking a highly skilled Occupational Therapist or Physiotherapist to manage a comprehensive wheelchair service within the Northumbria Wheelchair service. The role requires HCPC registration, a relevant degree, and a postgraduate qualification with teaching capability.

Posture training (Oxford 4 Day) is a plus. You will assess complex needs, select interventions balancing safety and cost, and ensure safety for users and carers while upholding trust

Qualifications

• UK-acquired/recognised Diploma or degree in Occupational Therapy or Physiotherapy.
• Registered with Health & Care Professions Council.
• Post Graduate Diploma or relevant post graduate experience.
• Teaching & Assessing qualification (or willing to work towards) appropriate to level of post holder to enable mentoring of students, junior staff and delivery of in house training.
• Completion of Oxford 4 Day Posture course.

Responsibilities

• Full assessment of the service user’s wheelchair and postural needs, analysing their situation and the effect their illness or disability has on their lives.
• To identify and select the most appropriate wheelchair service intervention options – balancing the complex needs of the suitability of equipment, service user choice, risk, safety, independence, areas of conflict, eligibility, and cost effectiveness – making informed decisions with all concerned.
• Ensure service user and carer safety at all times.
• Ensure that our decision making encompasses the Trust’s values on service user care and the provision of safe and quality services.

Skills

Driving licence

Education

Diploma or degree in Occupational Therapy or Physiotherapy

HCPC registration

Postgraduate Diploma

Teaching & Assessing qualification

Oxford 4 Day Posture course

Job description

Site Northumbria Healthcare Manufacturing and Innovation Hub Town Seaton Delaval Salary £39,959 - £48,117 pro rata per annum Salary period Yearly Closing 01/11/2026 23:59

Do you want to work in one of the best performing NHS organisations in England? Work for an organisation that was voted the best acute and combined acute and community trust in the country, based on the experience of its staff (NHS Staff Survey 2022). Work in an organisation that supports its staff and focuses on staff experience as much as it does the experience of its patients? You can live and breathe in an area that has the cleanest air, cost effective living, great nightlife, some of the best schools with a wealth of history available on your doorstep. Sound too good to be true? Well it isn’t, this is what you get when you work for Northumbria Healthcare and, this is…the Northumbria Way!

What the Northumbria Way means for you:

• Extensive staff health and well-being programme including access to our specialist Wellbeing Hub
• Support and connection through a variety of Staff Network groups
• A range of flexible working opportunities
• Generous annual leave and pension scheme
• Access to lease car and home electronics scheme (qualifying criteria applies)
• Opportunities to improve your professional development through our vast training programmes
• Access to savings scheme via salary sacrifice with Northumberland Community Bank

We work closely with Kids First Nurseries that are based within our trust grounds at Wansbeck, North Tyneside and Hexham hospitals to care for our Trust family's children, they offer care for children from 6 weeks old up to 4 years. There are a number of funding options run by the government to help working parents, including Early Years Funding and Tax Free Childcare.

Flexible working offers choice in where, when, and how we work, ensuring patients remain at the heart of all we do. It’s open to everyone, and we aim to find solutions that work for both you and the organisation. All arrangements must be reasonable and balanced to maintain safe and effective patient care.

We are proud to be one of the country’s top performing NHS trusts – rated ‘outstanding’ overall by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). We provide a range of health and care services to support more than 500,000 people living in Northumberland and North Tyneside across the largest geographical area of any NHS Trust in England. Our teams deliver care from hospitals, a range of community venues and people’s homes. Our hospitals include a specialist emergency care hospital (the first of its kind in England), three general hospitals and community hospitals. In the community we deliver a wide range of community and public health services.

We lead in innovation and quality, having opened the Northumbria Healthcare Manufacturing and Innovation Hub during the Covid-19 pandemic and have recently launched our Community Promise – a pledge to make a real impact not just in healthcare but on the wider factors that affect people’s lives, such as education, employment and the economy.

If Northumbria Healthcare sounds like somewhere you could belong we would love to hear from you. Visit our website to catch up on our latest news.

Whilst Northumbria Healthcare are a highly innovative organisation, the use of Third Party Artificial Intelligence (AI) presents a risk to the integrity of our Recruitment & Selection processes. If you use AI, and it poses a risk to the integrity your individual recruitment process, we may withdraw your application at any stage of the process.

Job overview

• To ensure the provision of a comprehensive service within the resource available to the Northumbria Wheelchair service
• To manage own specialist caseload of clients who often present with complex needs, using advanced clinical reasoning to assess, prescribe, implement and evaluate the equipment provided.
• To role model compassionate and inclusive leadership in order to shape the creation of a collective leadership culture within the trust. This means demonstrating a consistent leadership style which (a) engages, enables and empowers others (b) uses coaching to promote ownership of learning and quality improvement and (c) facilitates team working and collaboration within teams / departments and across organisational boundaries.

Please note we reserve the right to close this vacancy prior to the closing date once the required number of suitable applications have been received.

Main duties of the job

• Full assessment of the service user’s wheelchair and postural needs, analysing their situation and the effect their illness or disability has on their lives.
• To identify and select the most appropriate wheelchair service intervention options – balancing the complex needs of the suitability of equipment, service user choice, risk, safety, independence, areas of conflict, eligibility, and cost effectiveness – making informed decisions with all concerned.
• Ensure service user and carer safety at all times.
• Ensure that our decision making encompasses the Trust’s values on service user care and the provision of safe and quality services.

Working for our organisation

We manage three major locality hospitals at North Tyneside, Wansbeck and Hexham, plus a number of smaller community hospitals and clinics from Tynemouth to Berwick on Tweed, covering one of the largest geographical areas of any NHS trust in the country. Leading in innovation and quality – opening a state of the art Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital, the first of its kind in England. Do you want to work in one of the best performing NHS organisations in England?

Work in an organisation that supports its staff and focuses on staff experience as much as it does the experience of its patients? You can live and breathe in an area that has the cleanest air, cost effective living, great nightlife, some of the best schools with a wealth of history available on your doorstep. Sound too good to be true? Well it isn’t, this is what you get when you work for Northumbria Healthcare, this is the Northumbria Way! Please read ‘applicant guidance notes’ before submitting your application.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Full assessment of the service user’s wheelchair and postural needs, analysing their situation and the effect their illness or disability has on their lives.

• To identify and select the most appropriate wheelchair service intervention options – balancing the complex needs of the suitability of equipment, service user choice, risk, safety, independence, areas of conflict, eligibility, and cost effectiveness – making informed decisions with all concerned.
• Ensure service user and carer safety at all times.
• Ensure that our decision making encompasses the Trust’s values on service user care and the provision of safe and quality services.

Person specification

Qualifications

• UK acquired/recognised Diploma or degree in Occupational Therapy or Physiotherapy.
• Registered with Health & Care Professions Council.
• Post Graduate Diploma or relevant post graduate experience.
• Teaching & Assessing qualification (or willing to work towards) appropriate to level of post holder to enable mentoring of students, junior staff and delivery of in house training.
• Completion of Oxford 4 Day Posture course.

Experience and Knowledge

• Experience of working with service users with primarily physical illness or disability.
• Knowledge of Wheelchair Services

Other Requirements

• It is an essential requirement of the role that the post holder has a valid driving licence and is either a car owner and able to use the car for work purposes, or has a Trust personal lease vehicle which may be used for the role. However, the Trust would consider making reasonable adjustments to the role, if necessary, to enable a disabled person to undertake the role

Applicants who are members of the Armed Forces, those who have a disability that requires support in the work place (two ticks pledge) and those who have been looked after by the care system as a child or young person (for example, in foster care, children's homes, kinship or local authority care) who meet the essential criteria will be interviewed under the Trust's interview guarantee scheme.

We recognise the positive value of diversity and inclusion and are committed to a workforce that is diverse, equal and inclusive. We welcome and encourage job applications from people of all backgrounds. We particularly welcome applications from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) candidates as BAME people are currently under-represented in our workforce as well as other under-represented groups such as LGBT+ and disabled candidates. We are proud to be a Disability Confident Employer, a Stonewall Diversity Champion, we have a Gold award from the Defense Recognition Scheme, and we are delighted to support Apprenticeships, Age Posi+ive and are a mindful employer.

If you require any reasonable adjustments to attend interview please make the recruitment team aware as soon as possible by calling our HR Recruitment Team on 0191 203 1415 option 2.

Applicants who meet the Fit and Proper Person Requirements (FPPR) will require additional pre-employment checks in line with CQC and NHS England statutory guidance.

Make sure to read the ‘applicant guidance notes’ before submitting your application and make sure you know everything there is to know before joining our fantastic trust!

Certificate of Sponsorship

Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust proudly hold a sponsor licence. In order to provide sponsorship you and the role you are applying for must meet UKVI eligibility requirements. Please check your eligibility prior to submitting an application. Skilled Worker visa: Overview - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Please note that it is a requirement of this Trust that all successful applicants pay for their own DBS certification if a DBS check is required for the post. The method of payment is a salary deduction from your first monthly pay.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

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.

Name Mark Buckley Job title Service Manager Email address [e-mail] Telephone number 0191 282 8958

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