Clinical Lead SLT - Schools Service - Band 8a

Job overview

Band 8a Clinical Lead Speech and Language Therapist:  Schools Service  12 month secondment - maternoty leave cover

Paediatric Community Services- Newham, East London Foundation Trust

Are you an experienced, innovative, creative speech and language therapist? Would you like to bring your skills to help lead our developing Schools Speech and Language Therapy Service and support continuous improvement?

We have an exciting opportunity for a maternity laeve cover 12 month seconment  to our Clinical Lead Speech and Language Therapist to lead our large and expanding Schools Service in the London Borough of Newham.

The Schools Service offers specialist assessment and intervention for children and young people aged 0-19 across a range of school settings including primary schools, secondary schools, colleges, resource provisions and special schools. The post includes leadership of the traded services to schools and delivery of our new jointly commissioned schools service model which was implemented in September 2024.

The post-holder will be responsible for the Clinical Leadership of a team of award winning, dedicated speech therapy staff. This will include both the operational management and clinical leadership of the service. There will be opportunity for service improvement and development work within the service and across the partnership with schools and local authority services, including our youth justice projects and work streams within our all age autism strategy.

Main duties of the job

The successful applicant will have relevant experience of working with children and families within schools, working with other professionals and of delivering service change and improvement.

The team is based at the child development centre where staff work closely with multidisciplinary partners as part of a wider AHP clinical leads team supported by the Head of Children’s Therapies.

The post holder will provide operational leadership for a high quality expert specialist speech and language therapy service to children and young people in a range of educational settings including mainstream primary and secondary schools, Resource provision units, special schools, and colleges. This will include managing the different funded service options including the traded service with schools.

The post holder will provide clinical leadership in the speech and language therapy Schools service ensuring effective clinical supervision, pathways of support, and will provide specialist second opinions to more junior colleagues.

The post holder will take a clinical lead on the development of objectives and projects relating to these specialist areas and support peers in their implementation.

The post holder will participate in local networks and partnership meetings and oversee service improvement work within the service.

The post holder will provide line management duties, ensuring smooth operation on a day to day basis as well as conducting clinical supervision and performance reviews.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To be responsible for the operational delivery of the Schools service and traded services  for children aged 0-18 years.
• To provide a highly specialist speech and language therapy service to CYP in a variety of community settings.
• To ensure stautory EHC health needs assessments are completed
• To work with other Clinical Leads and highly specialist SLTs to develop policy and procedure across care groups
• To take a lead role in working parties, clinical governance and development of service provision to ensure effectiveness
• To provide supervision, advice, support, second opinions and appraisal to more junior speech and language therapists, assistants and volunteers and ensure that Trust and SLT policies are adhered to by those staff.  (This may include the use of co-working, case review, in-service training and other supervisory techniques)
• To lead in recruitment, induction and supervision of SLT staff.
• To deliver core and specialist training relating to specialist areas to other speech and language therapists and to others e.g. health services and local authority staff
• To ensure that the service takes account of the needs of clients from a wide variety of ethnic and linguistic backgrounds
• To quality assure the service and make improvements to pathways and service delivery as required.
• To provide effective line management to staff within the service including safeguarding supervision, appraisals and management of staff absences.

For a more details job description and person specification please see attached JD & PS.

For contact details please see below.