Senior Occupational Therapist

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Thank you for your interest in the North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT). This is an exciting time to join us and be part of our journey to improve mental health care across North London and deliver excellent services to our local people. We will achieve this through the North London Way, as we:

• Collaborate at every level by living our values to create the right conditions for us all to work together.
• Develop our new Trust culture, to help make our new Trust a great place to work and to receive great care.
• Empower our teams to lead the planned improvements in our services, by skilling them and giving them the tools to make the changes.
• Focus on delivering excellence at every level to improve our performance and ensure consistently high-quality care across all our services.
• Ensure that research, quality improvement, and technology lead the way and are embedded in our services.
• Take a trauma informed approach to everything we do

We proactively welcome diversity in our workforce and pride ourselves on being an inclusive employer. We aim to recruit from our local communities and provide opportunities to all including apprenticeships, veterans, care leavers and more.

The North London Way to deliver: Better Mental Health, Better Lives, Better Communities.

Our trust website is: https://www.northlondonmentalhealth.nhs.uk/

Job overview

Community Mental Health Services are undergoing widespread, innovative transformation. The North London Foundation Trust are at the forefront of this transformation, developing a more holistic, recovery oriented, biopsychosocial approach to supporting people with mental illnesses, in partnership with primary care, other community NHS providers and the voluntary sector. The aim is to build support systems that reach the whole mental health population with a focus on prevention and sustained recovery delivered by multi-agency collaboration. Each population unit is based on the footprint of Primary Care Networks, bringing together NHS, voluntary sector, peer support and community organisations. These relationships will be central to the new community mental health model.

This is an exciting secondment opportunity to work across statutory and non-statutory boundaries in Camden and is central to the success of the development of the Occupational Therapy Service in our new Core Teams.

Main duties of the job

To lead on the OT provision across the three Service Teams to ensure that staff working in this professional line, work to support service users in their teams effectively.
• To support decision making at MDT meetings; ensuring that the role of OT is effectively represented and advocated for across all Service Teams.
• To maintain effective and meaningful collaborative relationships with the Service Managers and Advanced Practitioner across the system.
• To work as an integrated member of the multidisciplinary Core Team, supporting the team to develop and provide a high-quality service.
• To produce high-quality specific MoHO assessments and reports to support service users to maximise their activity of daily living skills and lifestyle management.
• To assess and recommend levels of care needed for packages of care to enable service users to live as independently as possible in the community. This will include liaising with other organisations and health care providers.
• To oversee, plan, and implement individual and/or group interventions delivered by the occupational therapy team, in collaboration with the client, using graded activity to achieve therapeutic goals.
• To take a lead role in assessing the needs of service users with complex mental and physical health needs. This includes falls risk minimisation work and the issuing and provision of equipment, aids, and adaptions.

Working for our organisation

North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT) is committed to improving mental health care across North London to deliver excellent services to our local people.

Our Five-Year Strategy:

1. We will provide consistently high-quality care closer to home.
2. With our partners in North London and each borough we will ensure equity of outcome for all
3. We will offer great places to work, providing staff with supportive environment to deliver outstanding care.
4. We will be more effective as an organisation by pioneering research, quality improvement and technology.

In order to meet the needs of the Trust you may be required from time to time to work at different locations to your normal place of work. This may mean that you are required to work at any location that fall under Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey or Islington. The Trust reserves the right to require staff to work at such other places or locations as it considers reasonable and necessary on a temporary or permanent basis.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities
• To provide a high standard of clinical assessment, treatment and care in keeping with the philosophy and operational policies of the service.
• To provide a service that respects diversity and equality and supports the service user and their carers in line with recovery principles.
• To manage referrals to occupational therapy from the locality teams; to provide screening, prioritising and effectively managing the waiting list.
• To engage service users in developing self-management skills and promoting independence and autonomy where appropriate.
• To utilise agreed frameworks and guidance such as NICE; evidence based best practice and or local policy and procedure, as well as a range of profession specific tools, the post holder will actively assess, plan, and determine the care needs of service users. They will undertake and contribute to profession specific and/ or multi-disciplinary team reviews of care.
• To contribute and develop care plans in collaboration with the service user.

This is not an exhaustive list, please see the attached Job Description and Person Specification for more information on the role requirements and duties.

Person specification

Education

Essential criteria

• Diploma/Degree in Occupational Therapy or Physiotherapy or Sports science
• Current registration with HPC or member of BACPR, CIMSPA, CEP UK or similar

Desirable criteria

• Coaching qualification in sports and exercise
• Motivational Interview Training

Skills and abilities

Essential criteria

• Experience of working as an Occupational Therapist/Physiotherapist/Sports technician in mental health services.
• Experience of working in a Multi-disciplinary team with a clear understanding of Team dynamics
• Experience of planning, running and evaluating assessment and treatment groups in mental health settings
• Experience of undertaking specialist clinical assessment in the acute mental health field

Desirable criteria

• Experience of contributing to staff and service user development initiatives
• Experience of supervising junior staff and students.

Knowledge

Essential criteria

• Application of recovery principles in meeting the needs of service users.
• Knowledge of the application of health and safety policy and assessment and management of clinical risk.
• knowledge of the impact of substance misuse on mental health

Desirable criteria

• Ability to manage and prioritise own workload and support junior staff in effective time management
• Excellent verbal & written communication skills in the English language with confident use of IT.

References will be required to cover your last 3 years of employment/training. One has to be from your current or most recent employer and the others from your previous employer. The references should be from persons with management responsibility or HR.

If you have been unemployed for a period of four years or more, please give the details of your last employer and one character referee of your choice (not members of your family). If more applicable, references will be requested from your teacher or head of faculty. Please ensure you provide full contact details.

Vacancies that are advertised as Fixed Term Contracts will also be available as secondment opportunities for substantive internal staff.

Please be aware that your documents eg. Passport/NI Card, will be electronically scanned using Home Office accredited Verification System.

Due to the high number of applications that are received for some posts, we will close vacancies before the stated closing date once the first 50 applications are received. Therefore, please apply as soon as possible.

All non-medical posts with the Trust are subject to a probationary period of six months, during which time you will be required to demonstrate to the Trust's satisfaction, your suitability for the position in which you will be employed.

Should you not hear from us within three working weeks of the closing date for this post, then regretfully in this instance, you have not been shortlisted.

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 improving efficiencies within the NHS both to make costs savings for NHS organisations but also to save you time when your employment transfers.

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

• Camden OT Band7 JD and Person Spec (PDF, 332.5KB)
• Functional Requirements (PDF, 536.5KB)
• A comprehensive guide for candidates (PDF, 875.7KB)