Occupational Therapist - Aquarius Ward

Job overview

This is a really exciting opportunity for an experienced band 6 to join the Occupational Therapy team on Aquarius ward, a general adolescent mental health inpatient unit.

The Occupational therapy team consists of this role band 6, a part time band 5 and an activity worker.

The band 6 post has recently been increased to full time giving an exciting opportunity for the new post holder to develop and expand the current Occupational Therapy provision.

The band 6 will lead the Occupational therapy team in providing a comprehensive Occupational therapy assessment and group and individual interventions to the young people on the unit. The post holder will also provide Occupational therapy consultation and support to the wider multi-disciplinary team, families, schools, and networks.

Although sensory training is not essential to this post, an understanding of sensory processing including assessment techniques and interventions such as the Alert programme, sensory spiders and ladders and the creation of sensory diets would be beneficial.

Experience working in child and adolescent mental health or with children and young people in other settings is also desirable but not essential.

Main duties of the job

Aquarius Ward is a specialist inpatient mental health provision for young people aged 12 – 18 who are experiencing an acute mental health crisis. It is a 12 bedded National Unit open 365 days a year, 24h a  day. It is part of the South London Partnership providing the adolescent in-patient services for young people under St George’s Southwest London Mental Health Trust, South London and Maudsley and Oxleas NHS Trust. The team provides inpatient treatment for adolescents aged 12 to their 18th birthday in an acute mental health crisis that is unable to be managed in the community with conditions such as severe depression, anxiety OCD, self-harm, psychosis and mania. You will be joining a multi-disciplinary team that is committed to the provision of highly quality service user centred care.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To provide a specialist Occupational Therapy service to service users within Aquarius ward providing interventions underpinned by the Model of Human Occupation and the principles of Recovery.
• To manage a defined caseload of patients with multiple and complex needs, using evidence based /person centred principles to assess, plan, implement and evaluate interventions in an in-patient adolescent setting.
• To participate in the planning, development and evaluation of OT services within a designated area/team, holding responsibility for defined projects.
• To maintain accurate and contemporaneous clinical records and produce specialist reports for case conferences.
• To provide leadership for junior staff, through supervision and appraisal.
• To represent occupational therapy within the multi-disciplinary team.
• To provide group and 1:1 interventions.
• To promote recovery and social inclusion.
• To maintain standards of OT practice as directed by the Director of Therapies.
• To undertake regular audit and R&D activities.
• To undertake the supervision of OT students on fieldwork placements.
• To provide ‘Disability Champion’ duties leading the multi-disciplinary team in Disability Equality matters within Specialist Services as required.