Highly Specialist Occupational Therapist | Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust in Wigan

Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust is pleased to be supporting the provision of Occupational Therapy on the PIPE at HMP Hindley, working in close partnership with custodial staff and North West Psychology Services who are the lead providers of the service.

HMP Hindley is a Category C male prison located in Wigan. The Preparation PIPE at HMP Hindley is a specialist 10-bed residential unit within a training prison, forming part of the national Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) Pathway. The service provides a psychologically informed, supportive environment for individuals with complex personality-related needs who are not yet ready to engage in structured treatment interventions. The PIPE focuses on building engagement, emotional stability and interpersonal skills through consistent relational practice, structured activities and dedicated keywork. Staff are trained to work in a psychologically informed way, using everyday interactions to support behaviour change, improve relationships and reduce risk.

The service aims to prepare residents to progress to more intensive OPD interventions, enhance their ability to manage risk and relationships, and support safe and effective progression through their sentence.

We are recruiting a Specialist Occupational Therapist to join the team at HMP Hindley. The candidate will ensure the delivery of a high-quality Occupational Therapy service within the PIPE. This is a unique and autonomous role, with the post holder as the sole Occupational Therapist on the PIPE, working alongside a multi-disciplinary team of operational staff and forensic psychology colleagues. They will deliver specialist occupational therapy assessment, formulation and intervention, including individual and group work, supporting those with complex clinical and risk presentations.

The role focuses on promoting occupational engagement, psychological wellbeing and pro-social functioning through therapeutic, recreational and supportive activities. The post holder will also contribute across the PIPE and wider prison, enhancing psychologically informed workforce capacity and supporting a relational approach to care and risk management.

The successful candidate will have experience working with individuals with complex needs who may struggle to engage, ideally in secure or institutional settings. They will be confident managing professional, ethical and organisational challenges in a complex environment and able to work both autonomously and collaboratively.

The post holder will be professionally supported and line managed by the OPD service at HMP Garth, which has an established Occupational Therapy team with extensive experience delivering services in similar settings.

Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 1.4 million people across our region and are also commissioned for services that cover the North West, North Wales and the Midlands. We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities.

At the heart of all we do is our commitment to ‘perfect care’ – care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together. We’re currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so.

Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.

• To provide leadership and highly specialist clinical expertise in the provision of an Occupational Therapy service for service users who have mental illness related needs within a custodial setting.
• To provide an Occupational Therapy service which is inclusive of best practice, evidence-based practice and outcome focused.
• To work as a member of the multidisciplinary team in providing and coordinating a therapeutic, person-centred treatment and care pathway.
• To provide clinical expertise to guide and influence the integrated therapeutic approach from an Occupational Therapy perspective to registered nurses, psychology, medical staff, speech and language therapists and support/direct care staff in the development and provision of meaningful occupational/recreational/educational facilities.