Clinical Specialist Occupational Therapist Band 8A - Fixed Term Contract to April 2026

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Clinical Specialist Occupational Therapist Band 8A to join our Rehabilitation services team. You will provide occupational therapy clinical expertise to children and young people with acquired brain injury and neurodisability accessing inpatient neurorehabilitation, long term disability management placements and short breaks.

Our service aims to promote outcome focussed interventions, safe therapy and care, function, and participation, of children and young people accessing home, school, and community life.

You will provide high quality advanced practical and theoretical knowledge, evidence-based teaching, consultation, assessment, treatment planning and interventions. You will provide an expert level of occupational therapy leadership to the rehabilitation occupational therapy team, offering supervision and clinical support to drive quality and effectiveness of service delivery.

This role is not open to sponsorship.

Staff benefits include shuttle bus, and more… Read more below.

Role Requirements

• To be an occupational therapy clinical expert in the management of children and young people with acquired brain injury and neurodisability.
• Provide leadership to the occupational therapy team, providing innovative, high quality and evidence based, occupation focussed interventions.
• To use expert knowledge and advanced clinical reasoning skills to provide highly specialist support and advice to the paediatric occupational therapy team in rehabilitation.
• Develop and lead on an identified area of occupational therapy clinical specialism.
• To assess for, plan, deliver and evaluate interventions for children within a multidisciplinary team setting.
• To produce functional and participation-based goals in collaboration with the child / young person, family, and MDT.
• Lead on and undertake specialist upper limb assessments of children with highly complex needs e.g., multiple co-morbidities, neurodisabilities, through standardised and non-standardised assessments and clinical observations.
• Lead on upper limb rehabilitation and postural care, supporting implementation of the organisation\’s upper limb pathway and evidence based upper limb rehabilitation interventions.
• Offer advanced knowledge and skills in the management of children with rehabilitation needs.
• Ensure the team offer occupation and participation focussed interventions as part of personalised treatment planning.
• Lead on and deliver specialist occupational therapy interventions, e.g., OPC, COOP.
• To assess for and implement use of neurotechnology within therapy sessions e.g., virtual reality, anti-gravity devices.
• To work collaboratively with families to maximise engagement in therapy sessions, support management of their child\’s needs and promote confidence in meeting their child\’s needs.
• To keep appropriate and accurate intervention records which fulfil legal, professional and the requirements of The Children\’s Trust.
• To contribute to child related reports as required and assist with the collation of these as required in a timely manner.
• To provide clinical cover across the service during episodes of staff shortage/heavy workload to ensure effective service delivery.
• Undertake other or additional duties that are within your skills and abilities, as the organisation may reasonably require from time to time.

Interview Date: To be confirmed.

If you would like to discuss the role, please contact the Recruitment & Compliance Team, on or email:

For more information, a copy of the candidate briefing pack and application form please click here.

PLEASE READ CAREFULLY – \’How to Apply\’

Terms and Conditions

PLEASE NOTE: The Children\’s Trust Application Form MUST be completed and submitted, for your application to be considered. As part of the shortlisting process, gaps in employment will be examined and further explored during the interview process.

Strictly no agencies, please.

As we often receive high levels of applicants for our roles, we regret that we will only be able to contact those applicants who are shortlisted for interviews. Therefore, if you have not heard from us within 2 weeks of the closing date, please assume you have not been shortlisted for an interview on this occasion.

About Us

The Children\’s Trust is the UK\’s leading charity for children with acquired brain injury, providing expert rehabilitation, education, therapy, and care at our national specialist centre in Tadworth, and to children and their families across the UK, via our Brain Injury Community Service.

Boasting a beautiful 24-acre site in Surrey, we are located just outside of London, close to the M25 (accessible via Junction 8, A217 to Tadworth) and easily accessible via National Rail, by way of: Clapham Junction, Sutton, and Epsom.

Staff Benefits

The work we do is highly rewarding, and in addition to an attractive salary, we offer a valuable range of benefits, including our staff flexible benefits platform, on-site nursery, free eye tests, enhanced Maternity and Paternity Pay, time out days for those experiencing menopause symptoms and time off for gender reassignment.

We also offer additional annual leave days for those with long service, with entitlements ranging from 35 to 41 days (including bank holidays) depending on your length of service.

Other benefits include free on-site parking; a staff shuttle service from Epsom and Sutton train stations to Tadworth Court, subsidised cafeteria, on-site staff accommodation (subject to availability), the ability to retain your NHS pension (where applicable), Teacher\’s pension (where applicable) or the opportunity to join an alternative scheme, and the opportunity to develop your career in a supportive and collaborative environment.

Rehabilitation of Offenders

Many roles at The Children\’s Trust are exempt from the provisions of Section 4 (2) of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, by virtue of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (as amended in 2013 and 2020) and as such, are subject to an Enhanced DBS check. Successful applicants will be required to complete an Enhanced Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) check, which will disclose all unspent convictions and adult cautions and any spent convictions or adult cautions that would not be protected. The exceptions to this are our retail roles within The Children\’s Trust shops, which are subject to Basic DBS checks which will disclose unspent convictions or adult cautions.

Equal Opportunity Employer

To help us achieve our ambition to give children and young people with brain injury and neurodisability the opportunity to live the best life possible, we want to accurately reflect the UK\’s diverse population. We want equity, diversity, and inclusion to be at the heart of everything we do, and our people, services, and culture to reflect the diverse needs of all. Through our diversity and inclusion strategy, we have made a commitment to increase the diversity of our charity and create an inclusive culture. We have networks across the organisation working to ensure that these aims are met – including an LGBTQIA2S+ group, Ethnic Diversity Group, and Spark – our broad EDI group. Read more about our EDI work here. We welcome applications from all who share our ambition regardless of background. We will strive to ensure that any reasonable adjustments are made in respect of interview and working arrangements.

Online Searches

In accordance with statutory safeguarding and child protection guidance, online searches will be conducted for shortlisted candidates before interview. The online searches will be conducted by a person who is independent of the interview and selection process and will focus on relevant information returned via searches of the candidate\’s name (and variations thereof). Social media searches will be limited to professional platforms such as LinkedIn. Any concerns relating to suitability for work with children and young people will be forwarded to the interview panel, for discussion during the interview.