Specialist Occupational Therapist

Job overview

We are looking to recruit a  Occupational Therapist within the Specialist Perinatal Mental Health Service.

This is an exciting opportunity for an enthusiastic and passionate occupational therapist to join our perinatal mental health team. The successful candidate will work with women during pregnancy and postnatally, providing occupational therapy input to promote women’s mental health and wellbeing, functioning and support their transition to motherhood.  The successful candidate will adopt an holistic approach to their practice, considering the needs of all individuals involved.

The role involves working as part of an MDT consisting of doctors, nurses, psychologists, OT, family support workers and administrative staff.  You will work in the community alongside other community services and in patient’s homes to support women and families who need specialist care.

Whilst this role will primarily focus on delivering Perinatal OT interventions in the Sefton district, we cover Liverpool also, there may be at times the need to cross cover

Main duties of the job

Independently manage own caseload, prioritising referrals

Select and complete bespoke standardised and non-standardised OT assessments, applying an understanding of complex mental health needs and the impact this can have on occupational performance within a parenting role, as well as the mother-infant relationshipCollaboratively set goals to guide OT interventions

Plan and facilitate a range of 1:1 therapeutic interventions using a graded approach to achieve individualised therapeutic goals

Contribute towards the planning, facilitation and evaluation of groups

Develop working networks with relevant community agencies, where appropriate collaborating to complete joint working

Represent an OT clinical perspective within the MDT and other professional meetings

Be aware of and respond appropriately to the safeguarding needs of adults and children

Contribute to the continued development and evaluation of the OT service within the perinatal team

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

To work with clients to identify OT goals as part of the overall care plan, using specialist mental health and OT assessment tools.

To plan and implement client centred individual and/or group interventions, using graded activity to achieve therapeutic goals.

To monitor, evaluate and modify treatment in order to measure progress and ensure effectiveness of intervention.

To apply a high level of understanding of the effect of disability and provide training and advice on lifestyle changes and adaptations to the client’s social and physical environment.

To assess the occupational needs of a defined client group and establish and evaluate appropriate treatment programmes.

To provide clinical advice, expertise and leadership within your team.

To co-ordinate the care of a defined group of service users carrying out their assessment and planning, implementing and evaluating their care under the guidelines of CPA without supervision. To act as care coordinator (when required) normally for the more complex cases e.g. those service users subject to CPA.

To monitor and offer professional advice and leadership to all team members with regards to their caseloads and working practices.

To ensure that the service users care plan is developed to meet the assessed need of the individual. To monitor, via performance management, the care plans developed for service users by all sector members to ensure that they are appropriate and of a high standard.

To liaise with family members, carers and significant others as necessary when completing the assessment and developing a care plan. To be a point of contact for service users and carers that have concerns regarding their care, making every effort to resolve their concerns sensitively and promptly, referring to and informing the Team Manager as necessary.

To develop a risk management plan for service users under your care, taking note of the contributions from other members of the team. Ensure that all significant people are aware of the risk management plan and are actioning it appropriately.

To monitor and work with all team members to ensure that service user risk is managed appropriately and that risk management plans are of a high quality.

To participate in the duty/on call rota within the CMHT where such arrangements exist, including appropriate adult.

To lead the systematic monitoring and evaluation of service users under the care of the sector you have responsibility for.

To have an in-depth knowledge of the Mental Health Act. To support service users and their carers when the Mental Health Act is being used to admit the service user to hospital.  To support staff involved in the application of the Mental Health Act, ensuring that they are aware of and fulfilling their duties.

To monitor the provision of a range of therapeutic activities for service users by supervision of sector members’ caseloads and via audit.

To use skills gained through training and experience to de-escalate situations where service users become physically or verbally aggressive. Use your judgement, gained from experience, to establish if a service user requires assessment by a medic or possibly hospital admission.

To use skills gained through experience to deal with service users who become angry, hostile or distressed.

To ensure all sector members get appropriate support following violent incidents and liaise with the Team Manager to ensure any identified actions arising from such incidents are implemented.

To participate in and/or lead service user reviews ensuring that service user needs are met and that the team has all the relevant information on which to base their clinical decisions.

To develop care plans that enable service users to reach and maintain their optimum level of health and independence to help them to remain in the community in their chosen setting or return to this on discharge.

To react pro-actively in cases of service user crisis and put in place immediate plans to resolve the situation.