Clinical Specialist Occupational Therapist

Job overview

Are you a passionate and experienced Occupational Therapist looking for a leadership role within acute mental health services for Older Adults? Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust is seeking a highly motivated Band 7 Occupational Therapist to join our dedicated team in the Oxleas Intensive Home Treatment Team (IHTT).  As a Band 7 OT, you will play a key role in both clinical and leadership capacities, helping to shape and enhance the occupational therapy provision across our directorate services for Older Adults

• Providing specialist occupational therapy assessments and interventions to service users experiencing acute mental health crises.
• Acting as a key member of the acute and crisis services management team, leading and contributing to strategic service developments and quality improvement initiatives.
• Offering expert advice and guidance to management teams on the role and function of occupational therapy within acute mental health care.
• Supporting service development activities within the wider directorate and contributing to strategic planning for occupational therapy.
• Deputising for the directorate head of profession, ensuring high-quality service delivery and professional leadership.
• Facilitating access to employment, vocational training, education, and volunteering opportunities to support service users' recovery and rehabilitation.

Main duties of the job

To provide an Occupational Therapy service to clients of the Intensive Home Treatment Team. The purpose of the home treatment team is to assess and intensively treat older people at home, in order to prevent admission to hospital or to facilitate timely discharge from in patient care. This will involve completing generic and specific OT assessments, devising treatment plans and coordinating discharge from the service to the CMHT and other relevant services. To liaise with the ward manager, consultant and acute occupational therapists in co-ordinating discharges from hospital, ensuring that people have the short-term appropriate support to enable them to live independently in the community.

To provide clinical supervision to Occupational Therapy staff (qualified and unqualified) within the IHTT and also across the Older Adult OT services within the directorate. To work autonomously within professional guidelines and within the overall framework of the service’s policies and procedures, utilising research skills for audit, policy, service development and research within the area served by the team/service.

To provide leadership across the Occupational Therapy services in Older Adults, supporting the development of protocols and policies, as well as treatment interventions (in line with current Evidence Base) and linking in with Trust and Directorate forums to support local service provision and quality of care agendas.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To actively support the Directorate Occupational Therapy lead in the overall development of the OT service within the Acute & Crisis Directorate to demonstrate effectiveness in providing a high-quality assessment and intensive treatment service for older people with mental illness.
• To undertake new assessments and co-ordinate crisis interventions which will ensure the older person is supported at home whilst meeting their mental health needs. In appropriate cases this will involve aiming for the prevention of admissions to hospital.
• To manage a complex clinical caseload, which will involve positive risk taking and managing high risk/crisis situations within a range of settings.
• To work as a member of the MDT
• To lead on the development of evidence-based OT practice
• To provide OT specific assessment & interventions via groups & individual work related to:

-occupational performance

-occupational needs

• To support service development across Older Adults services within the directorate.
• To lead/participate in research/audit activities within OPMH
• To supervise the work of junior OT staff within the team and across the Older Adult services in the directorate as per the supervisory structure.
• To facilitate OT students on fieldwork placement.
• Contribute to and carry out risk assessment & risk management plans
• To provide specialist OT advice to the MDT
• To work independently without direct supervision
• To be an OT specialist and have in-depth knowledge of OT assessment & interventions for the client group
• To provide leadership for Older Adult MH OTs
• To represent Occupational Therapy at a Directorate Level in relevant forums and management meetings
• To contribute to the maintenance and development of the Trust wide OT service
• To undertake identified generic responsibilities for an agreed percentage of time
• To work within the social inclusion agenda
• To develop and establish standards of OT practice within specialist clinical area
• To actively contribute and participate in multi-disciplinary development across the Trust linked to clinical specialism
• To provide training input to the Trustwide OT in-service training programme and other Professionals
• To work closely with other OT clinical specialists across the Trust.