Specialist Speech & Language Therapist

Step into a place where exceptional care, patients, culture, and careers come together.

Explore our current vacancies and take your first step toward making a real difference.

Join us. Make a difference. Be part of Team LGT.

Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust, (LGT), is a community-focused provider of local and acute care, delivering high-quality services to over one million people living across the London boroughs of Lewisham, Greenwich, and Bexley. We provide whole-life care and are here to support our communities to live healthier lives as well as taking care of them when they need us the most.

Employing almost 7,500 colleagues, affectionately known as Team LGT, we provide services at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, University Hospital Lewisham, and at over a dozen community settings in Lewisham. We also provide some services at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup.

We have recently launched our new vision and values to mark the LGT10 – the tenth anniversary of our Trust forming in 2013. Our trust vision is to be exceptional. In the quality of our patient care; our support for colleagues; and in the difference we make through our partnerships and in our communities.

Our hospitals and community sites provide a wide range of inpatient and outpatient services, as well as emergency and planned care. The Trust is rated as “good” or “outstanding” in over three-quarters of the services inspected by the Care Quality Commission.

Every year our work includes performing 10,000 procedures in our theatres; bringing seven and a half thousand new lives into the world; carrying out 570,000 visits to patients in their homes or communities and providing emergency care for more than 300,000 patients arriving in our busy Urgent and Emergency Departments.

LGT is a centre for the education and training of medical students enrolled with King’s College London’s GKT School of Medical Education. We are a training centre for nurses, midwives and allied health professionals. We are pioneering new roles that will support the changing needs of our patients and are one of the largest employers of physician associates in the country.

We are committed to working with our partners to deliver the best outcomes for our local communities. This means playing an active role in the South East London Integrated Care System (ICS), and in formal partnerships including the South East London Acute Provider Collaborative, provider partnerships with our local mental health trusts and borough-based boards of the ics in Bexley, Greenwich and Lewisham.

Job overview

Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust Children’s Speech and Language Therapy Service are looking for a band 6 therapist to join our large, diverse, and supportive team on the school-aged pathway. We serve the South-East London Borough of Lewisham, as part of the Community Health Service for Children, Young People and Families (CCYP) rated at ‘Outstanding’ in our last CQC inspection. In this post you will work across our special schools and mainstream core and traded pathways providing universal, targeted and specialist support to your own caseload of schools. With 2 days per week at Watergate Special School for children with severe learning disabilities (primary) and 3 days per week in the mainstream core/traded pathway.

Main duties of the job

We offer a comprehensive and structured induction to all of our new starters followed by regular, high quality clinical supervision. You will also be allocated a ‘buddy’ to support your transition into the team.

.

Working for our organisation

Our people are our greatest asset. When we feel supported and happy at work, this positivity reaches those very people we are here for, the patients. Engaged employees perform at their best and our Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) initiatives contribute to cultivate a culture of engagement. We have four staff networks, a corporate EDI Team and a suite of programmes and events which aim to insert the 5 aspirations:

• Improving representation at senior levels of staff with disabilities, from black, Asian, and ethnic minorities background, identify as LGBTQ+ and women, through improved recruitment and leadership development
• Widening access (anchor institution) and employability
• Improving the experience of staff with disability
• Improving the EDI literacy and confidence of trust staff through training and development
• Making equalities mainstream

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Job Summary:

• Accountable to Therapies Manager
• To contribute to the School Aged team in developing, testing out and implementing new ways of working.
• To ensure that the service provided is integrated (within the relevant multi/uni disciplinary care pathways), evidence based and delivered in accordance with care pathways/protocols and responsive to the needs of the local population.
• To assess, diagnose, manage and evaluate outcomes for children and young people presenting with a range of speech, language, communication difficulties some of which may be highly complex.
• The post holder will hold an area of special interest within the profile of the clinical caseload.
• To develop, implement and evaluate specialist teaching packages within the clinical caseload.

Qualifications and Training

• Recognised Speech and Language Therapy Degree Qualification or equivalent
• Health Professions Council – Licence to Practice
• Registration as a member of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists
• Membership of relevant CENs
• Post graduate study relevant to the field or equivalent specialist advanced short courses
• Post graduate training in the area of dysphagia.

Experience

• Able to demonstrate post-qualification experience working with children with a wide range of speech, language and communication needs
• Able to demonstrate experience of working with schools and engaging them in interventions
• Experience of collaborative working with education staff and parents.
• Experience of training othersExperience of working with children with complex needs including severe learning disabilities, Autism Spectrum Disorder, physical disabilities, sensory difficulties, profound and multiple complex needs
• Experience of using SCERTS framework with children with ASD
• Experience working with children with eating and drinking difficulties

We reserve the right to close the post before the stated closing date, please apply early. We do not contact applicants with the outcome of the shortlisting. If you have been shortlisted, you will receive an invite to an assessment day or interview.

As a local employer and anchor institution we work closely with our community to recruit locally and we welcome applications from the widest variety of people to ensure our workforce are reflective of the local communities which we serve. We encourage all suitable candidates to apply including if you are Black, Asian or other ethnic minorities, live with a disability (visible or not) or are LGBT+. We have a number of active staff networks including Disability, LGBT+, Multicultural Inclusion and Women’s staff networks to bring staff together and celebrate diversity across our whole workforce.

Please note: Information provided during recruitment and pre‑employment checks must be accurate. Misrepresentation may be investigated as fraud and could lead to withdrawal from the process, professional sanctions, or criminal action.

Please note: that sponsorship under the Skilled Worker route is subject to Trust allocation and UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) approval.

Use of AI in recruitment: We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support the initial review of applications against the essential criteria for this role. Where AI is used, it will support rather than replace human decision-making, and applications will remain subject to appropriate human review.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

#J-18808-Ljbffr