Senior Specialist Occupational Therapist - Birmingham

West Heath House - Birmingham

Hours: 35 hours

Brainkind is a charity that aims to improve the lives of people with brain injuries in the UK. Our assessment centres, rehabilitation units and hospitals use expert neurorehabilitation to support people to regain the skills they have lost. We treat people with a range of brain injuries – sustained through trauma, illness, substance abuse and more – to recover and meet their personal goals. Our employees are incredibly passionate about the jobs they do – you’ll find a strong team spirit across our services and amazing colleagues who always pull together and look out for each other.

The Service

West Heath House works with people who have to cope with a range of cognitive, physical and/or emotional symptoms following a severe brain injury. Rehabilitation is based on a neurobehavioral approach and focuses on enabling service users to function more independently and to participate in as many of their previous roles and activities as possible, while developing their lives with privacy, dignity and respect.

The Role

To work as part of a multi/interdisciplinary team providing occupational therapy input within the Brainkind Neurobehavioral model to service users with acquired brain injury (ABI) and to lead on OT provision within the service. To liaise with internal and external professionals, family members and service users.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Work within a specialist clinical area as an autonomous professional with highly developed skills and knowledge in neurological rehabilitation, potentially as the sole clinician but with supervision (which may be remote) of a more senior OT.
• Accept professional accountability and responsibility.
• Manage and prioritise a caseload of service users with complex mental/physical health needs and/or challenging behaviour.
• Complete the OT process and use evidence based/service user centred principles and clinical reasoning to assess, formulate a treatment plan, implement and evaluate interventions bringing specialist knowledge to more complex cases.
• Address occupational performance and skill deficits enabling the service user in areas of self-maintenance, productivity, education and leisure.
• Develop programmes of care, ensure adequate and detailed handover of programmes to rehabilitation support workers or therapy assistants, monitor through data gathering, evaluate and modify treatment in order to measure progress and ensure effectiveness of intervention according to the neurobehavioural model.
• Work with service users, family/carers and outside agencies in a sensitive and flexible way considering the most appropriate environment for assessment and intervention and responding to changing needs, circumstances and cultural issues.
• Maintain the highest levels of integrity during all communications.

About you

What are we looking for?

• Degree or diploma in Occupational Therapy.
• Registered with the HCPC.
• Specialist knowledge of OT interventions in ABI (e.g. cognitive rehabilitation, upper limb rehabilitation).
• Experience of working with service users with neurological deficits or acquired brain injury.
• Able to manage complex dysphagia within an adult neurology caseload.
• Minimum of 4 years post registration with at least 2 years experience working with neurological conditions (this may include experience as part of a mixed caseload or prequalification experience).
• Valid UK Driving licence and willingness to drive service users in unit vehicles.

Rewards

You can look forward to excellent benefits, including:

• A competitive Salary of £49,387 - £56,515 per annum DOE
• 33 days annual leave inclusive of bank holidays
• Access to our Employee Assistance Programme (EAP)
• Excellent training and support
• Group life assurance
• Free parking
• Company Pension
• Long Service and Staff Awards

All clinical roles have CPD opportunities and we may support further professional development. We will consider applications from candidates who require sponsorship. All successful candidates are subject to compliance checks including 3 years of checkable references and DBS/PVG checks. Brainkind is a Disability Confident Employer. As users of the disability confident scheme, we guarantee to interview all disabled applicants who meet the minimum criteria for the vacancy. Brainkind is committed to promoting a diverse and inclusive organisation. It’s a place where we recognise, celebrate and live our values, including offering a range of inclusive employment policies and staff engagement forums to support employees from all backgrounds.