Band 5 Community Occupational Therapist | Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust in Harrow

Would you like to work in an innovative trauma informed team, where there is a strong focus on staff development and delivering high quality care? We are looking for a Band 5 Occupational Therapist (OT) to join our well-established, diverse team. We want you to bring your unique blend of experiences, backgrounds, perspectives and knowledge to our OT team as diversity makes us stronger.

You will have the opportunity to specialise your skills in a number of areas, including:

• Sensory integration for service users with complex emotional needs and neuro-diverse needs;
• Regular Trauma Informed Approaches training and team formulation
• Weekly Inservice training covering a number of skills (Motivational Interviewing, Crisis Management, risk assessments, substance misuses, various psychological therapies and more)
• Model of Creative Ability Training
• Offering OT specific one-to-one and group interventions such as Recovery Pathway, Recovery Through Activity, Sensory Awareness

The Team serves the diverse and vibrant population of the London Borough of Harrow. We are located in Harrow and Wealdstone and a 10-minute walk from the Town Centre. The nearest over ground station is Harrow Wealdstone.

We believe that the best health care is delivered by multi-disciplinary teams working well together and in partnership with other teams and services to provide seamless care. Occupational Therapists work as part of a team and you will contribute to the success of the team by drawing support from more experienced staff, and other health professionals, but also by ensuring adherence to the standards which the people using our services deserve.

Occupational Therapist band 5 will work alongside the band 6 OT to provide assessment and intervention for the population of Harrow with Mental Health diagnosis and also contribute to service development and other projects. You will have an OT-specific caseload, consisting of assessment, groupwork and individual interventions as well as contributing towards our Community Psychosocial Therapies offer with our Psychology colleagues. We work within the Recovery Framework and Trauma Informed Approaches (TIA) encouraging independence, social integration and the achievement of personalised goals. You will have the opportunity to use your skills and creativity to contribute to the development and implementation of treatment programs, pathways and initiatives in order for us to deliver high quality, evidence-based interventions that improve service users' functional abilities, independence and overall quality of life.

Applicants must have a qualification in Occupational Therapy and be HCPC registered in order to be considered for the post.

Key Responsibilities:

• To provide specialist, culturally appropriate, evidence based occupational therapy assessments for service users within the team in order to establish and meet their occupational needs.
• To select and use validated standardised assessment tools routinely and in practice, exhibiting clinical reasoning skills; to include the Model of Human Occupation (MOHO) assessments.
• To plan, implement and review individually tailored programmes of intervention using individual and group work approaches.
• To support service users and colleagues to ensure that care plans are developed in partnership with the individual and that they reflect recovery goals.
• To identify opportunities and needs for group work in the community and to plan, implement, facilitate and evaluate community groups which promote social inclusion for service users.
• To apply a high level of understanding of the effects of mental illness and provide training and advice on lifestyle changes and adaptations to the service users social and physical environment.
• To determine the impact of mental and physical conditions on service users functional ability and undertake assessment/make recommendations with regards to the provision of equipment/aids and adaptations.
• To provide monitoring of medication, for all service users on both generic and OT specific caseload, in line with the CNWL OT Medication Management Guidelines.
• To follow local protocol and obtain recommended equipment and/or liaise with local providers of equipment to ensure provision as appropriate.
• To proactively undertake and ensure rigorous risk assessment & risk management strategies are applied.
• To work in partnership with other agencies and offer supervision and guidance to external agencies as required.
• To support service users in relation to their physical health, employment, and housing and welfare benefits issues; referring to specialist provider services as necessary.
• To provide OT consultation to other professionals within the team.
• To provide all service users on caseload with a full adult mental health assessment and offer regular monitoring of mental state.
• To provide service users with therapeutic care including within the individuals own home and other community venues.

Communication:

• To demonstrate excellent communication skills and form positive therapeutic relationships using warmth and empathy and enable service user empowerment.
• To establish and maintain effective communication networks with service users, with complex learning, emotional and behavioural needs, their carers, other professionals and agencies in order to ensure a comprehensive and consistent approach to client care.
• To provide and receive highly complex, sensitive, condition related or distressing/unwelcome information to service users and carers demonstrating empathy and reassurance.
• To demonstrate skills and resourcefulness in communication when barriers to understanding are present, including utilising interpreting resources.
• To promote the role of OT within the Team, representing an OT clinical perspective in all clinical meetings.
• To develop and maintain robust partnership working with the Acute services, Early Intervention Service; and other statutory and non-statutory providers.
• To confidentially handle and liaise regarding sensitive issues and information with other services such as GPs, CAMHS, Police, etc.
• To attend and contribute to OT specific meetings and Team clinical and business.

Documentation:

• To ensure timely, accurate and informative records of clinical assessments, interventions and contacts are recorded on clinical systems which meets all standards, according to Trust policy and CQUIN targets.
• To provide timely, comprehensive, clearly written occupational therapy reports on service users assessments and treatments.
• To record the OT treatment plan within the service users Treatment ward MDT care plan.

Clinical Governance:

• To comply with and implement relevant national policy legislation and guidance; taking a lead on translating such documents into occupational therapy practice.
• To apply national and Trust wide guidelines/standards of practice; in line with Trust and the College of Occupational Therapists standards and guidelines.
• To work with the service line and borough frameworks to implement the care quality agenda.
• To act as an autonomous clinician, assuming accountability for own clinical practice.
• To maintain and observe confidentiality of all information relating to service users as detailed in the Confidentiality Policy and Caldicott Principles; and to adhere to CNWL Information Governance Policy.

Service Delivery and Development:

• To ensure that all assessments and interventions comply with the teams identified package of care, for the individual care clusters.
• To safeguard the health, safety and welfare of service users at all times.
• To encourage and support MDT colleagues to practice within a personal recovery framework which supports social inclusion and self management.
• To contribute as a member of the multi-disciplinary team, to the delivery of operational service/team objectives.
• To offer occupational therapy/professional advice to other MDT service colleagues as indicated.
• To participate in the operational planning and implementation of policy and service development.
• To contribute to the writing of local protocols with regard to specialist OT knowledge.

Personal and Professional Development:

• To keep abreast of changing occupational therapy clinical practice, new developments, evidence based practice and research.
• To undertake the Preceptorship process as outlined by COT guidelines and CNWL Trust policy, as appropriate.
• To undertake activities of Continuous Professional Development including identifying own learning needs and recording learning outcomes in a portfolio.
• To participate in local and trust wide OT service activities that promote and contribute to the building of knowledge and evidence base for the benefit of the professional body of occupational therapy e.g. R&D clinical networks etc.
• To assume personal responsibility for maintaining a working knowledge of new statutory guidelines that influence clinical practice.
• To ensure timely booking and attendance of mandatory and statutory training.
• To maintain a professional knowledge base and act as a resource to others regarding specialist areas of expertise i.e. occupational therapy, health promotion, recovery and social inclusion.
• To review and reflect on own occupational therapy performance through effective use of professional supervision, operational management supervision, CPD opportunities and annual appraisal; ensuring own learning and development needs are identified.

Staff & Students:

• To undertake an accredited fieldwork educator course in order to be an approved practice placement educator for OT students.
• To deliver and actively participate in internal OT and team CPD sessions, sharing skills and knowledge with colleagues.
• To act as a practice placement educator for OT students, attending all relevant meetings and liaising with universities as appropriate.
• To be responsible for the supervision and written assessment of a minimum of two placements per academic year (placements can be shared with other OT colleagues).
• To deliver learning and development opportunities about OT to students and staff from other professions.
• To provide and contribute to the induction of new staff.

Professional Ethics:

• To apply expert skills and knowledge to demonstrate professional competence and fitness to practice as an occupational therapist; as required by the Health Professions Council.
• To comply with the COT Code of ethics and Professional Conduct, HPC Professional Standards and CNWL Mental Health Trust Policies.

Qualifications:

• Essential: BSc Hons/Diploma in Occupational Therapy, HCPC registration
• Desirable: Practice education training

Experience:

• Essential: Relevant work/voluntary experience in mental health or related setting, Experience of developing a basic research proposal
• Desirable: Experience of working in a multi cultural environment, Experience of working in a community mental health setting, Computerised data collection systems in a health setting, Planning, implementation & evaluation of group interventions, Experience of training others in technical, leisure or creative skills, Interest in participating in evidence based activities according to departmental need.

Clinical Skills:

• Essential: Application of OT process, Risk management, Reflective practice, Client-centred practice, Ability to prioritise work load and use own initiative, Ability to treat service users with respect and dignity at all times, adopting a culturally sensitive approach, which considers the needs of the whole person, Able to build constructive relationships with warmth and empathy, using good communication skills
• Desirable: Able to delegate work to others in clinical team.