Highly Specialist Speech and Language Therapist - Early Years

Job overview

This is an exciting opportunity to take on the role of jointly leading the EYS (Early Years) team. You will be working closely with the 8a EYS clinical lead and fellow Band 7 EYS leads carrying out a similar role. As one of the Early Years Leads, you will provide a highly specialist Speech and Language Therapy service to children 0-5 living in Newham. The role will involve working within clinics, EYS education settings, Family Hubs and other community settings across the borough.

The post holder will:

• Contribute to the development and improvement of care pathways, intervention packages and training for parents and our partner agencies
• Jointly manage shared team caseloads and contribute to the planning and fair allocation of work across the EYS team
• provide a service which takes account of the needs of children and families from a range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds
• deputise for the EYS Clinical Lead & other Band 7 EYS leads when appropriate.

Main duties of the job

To provide specialist assessment and therapy for children under 5 with speech, language and communication needs. This will include multi-agency working and working closely with families and early years settings to build confidence and skills to enable children's needs to be identified and supported early at the right time and in the right place.

The role will involve leading on improvement projects and contributing to the development of the service we offer to children and families in Newham.

There may be opportunity to work one day a week within the autism diagnostic service (dependent on interest and experience).

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Working within the Early Years Service you will hold a caseload of children under 5 who present with a variety of speech language and communication needs. This includes children with social communication differences, developmental language disorder, stammering and speech disorders.

The post-holder will manage their own caseload and will support more junior staff through supervision, competency development and annual appraisal. Part of the role will involve training education staff and other partner agencies within Newham. The role will involve managing shared team caseloads and jointly planning and allocating work equitably across the team. There will be opportunity to lead service improvement work along with audit and pathway development. The post holder will on occasion deputise for the Early Years 8a Clinical Lead.

The successful applicant will have relevant experience of working with children and families, especially where a diagnosis of autism has been given, in providing support within early years settings including writing EHC needs assessment reports and participating in annual reviews. Previous experience of autism diagnostic work is desirable but not essential.

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.