Senior Perinatal 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

The Specialist Perinatal Mental Health Service (SPMHS) is a multi-disciplinary community mental health service for pregnant and postnatal women and birthing people with moderate to severe mental illness. The aim of the team is to detect, prevent and treat perinatal mental health problems to improve the experience of pregnancy and the two years postpartum for service users and their families.

Staff work closely with their local maternity sites in North Central London; University College London Hospital, Whittington Hospital, Royal Free Hospital, Barnet Hospital and North Middlesex University Hospital. Clinics run at maternity sites, children's centres and community centres across the boroughs as well as home visits.

The successful post holder can decide between the South team (inner HCAS) and East team (outer HCAS) as their preferred clinical base.

The East team covers the boroughs of Enfield & Haringey, and the team base is at Forest Primary Care Centre, 308 Hertford road, N9 7HD

The South team covers the boroughs of Camden & Islington, and the team base is at St. Pancras hospital, NW1 0PE.

Main duties of the job

The post holder will develop and oversee the provision of an evidence based occupational therapy service within defined service areas.

Provide clinical leadership in alignment with evolving service developments, and assist the Team manager in the strategic coordination of the Occupational Therapy service.

To assess and contribute to the diagnosis of individuals referred to the Perinatal service.

To manage a caseload of women and birthing people with diverse and complex needs, providing interventions which support and promote improved mental and physical health for mothers, babies and their families.

To plan, implement and evaluate occupational therapy interventions.

To be responsible for supporting and supervising the Band 6 Occupational therapists and Occupational therapy students.

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.

Why NLFT?
• We develop and retain our staff through leadership behaviours and managers programme and many more opportunities.
• We promote flexible working and support staff with a range of health and wellbeing initiatives.
• NHS Discounts, generous annual leave and NHS pension scheme
• Excellent internal staff network

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

The post holder will be responsible for formulating Occupational therapy specific care and treatment plans for service users with diverse and complex mental health needs, in accordance with best practice and service objectives. They will manage a varied and challenging caseload, including conducting home visits, as well as assessments and reviews. The role also involves collaborative work through joint appointments with multidisciplinary professionals to ensure holistic and integrated care.

Flexibility is essential, as the post requires travel across boroughs to conduct face-to-face appointments in patients' homes, hospital clinics, and community settings. Although access to a car is advantageous, it is not a mandatory requirement.

This job description is written as an indication of the nature and scope of duties and responsibilities. Additional competencies may be required to fulfil the needs of specific areas and client groups. It is not intended as a fully descriptive list and does not include specific skills or therapeutic interventions that may be required of the specialist service area. The post- holder will be expected to carry out other duties assigned by the Operational Service Manager's, which are appropriate to the grade.

**Please see Job Description and Person Specification for detailed description of roles and responsibilities.

Person specification

Qualifications / Registrations

Essential criteria

• Diploma/Degree in Occupational Therapy
• Current registration with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) as an Occupational Therapist
• Completion of Student practice educators course
• Completion of Children and Adult Safeguarding training

Desirable criteria

• Evidence of Postgraduate or equivalent specialist training in areas of practice relevant to the post

Skills / Abilities

Essential criteria

• Skills in the use of a range of methods of occupational therapy assessments, intervention and management for the full range of problems of severity and complexity presented by adults with mental illness, including challenging behaviours.
• Ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, with clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS
• Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of multi -media materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings

Desirable criteria

• Ability to reflect on and critically appraise own performance and commitment to lifelong learning

Experience / Knowledge

Essential criteria

• Experience of Occupational therapy assessment and treatment of clients across a range of care settings, including community.
• Experience of teaching, training and providing supervision.
• Experience of quality, audit and record keeping systems

Desirable criteria

• Clinical experience working as an Occupational Therapist with service users in the perinatal period

Personal Qualities

Essential criteria

• Strong interest in, and commitment to, working with and improving services for people under the care of perinatal mental health services

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

• Band 7 Occupational Therapist JD (PDF, 616.3KB)
• Band 7 Occupational Therapist JD (PDF, 616.3KB)
• Functional Requirements (PDF, 218.6KB)
• A comprehensive guide for candidates (PDF, 875.7KB)