Highly Specialist Occupational Therapist

Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust celebrates diversity and promotes equal opportunities; we are committed to challenging and eliminating racism and other forms of discrimination and advancing and promoting equality of opportunity in the provision of services and creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We believe that everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and respect.
We take positive action to support disadvantaged groups and also particularly encourage applications from ethnic minorities, disabled and LGBTQIA+ people that are under-represented in our workforce. Furthermore we welcome applications from reservists and ex-armed forces personnel as we recognise the benefits of the values, skills, training and experience that they bring to their work with us. We encourage all applicants to share their equality information with us.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------, The post will be as part of the Greater Manchester Specialist Support Team (SST) based in Eccles. The GM SST is a multidisciplinary team consisting of Nursing, Occupational Therapy, Social Work, Psychology, Speech and Language Therapy, and Support Workers. You will be expected to work in all areas of Greater Manchester and liaise with the local Learning Disability, Mental Health and Autism services to develop proactive and preventative risk mitigation support.
We deliver a variety of OT assessments and interventions to enable a shared understanding of an individual's volition, personal skills set, occupational and environmental needs across a range of community settings and support models with the aim to address barriers to participation and balance, occupational associated risk and reducing restrictive practice where possible. We also offer advice and consultation and training to external agencies., Provide high quality consultation, specialist assessment and intervention in the development of effective clinical services to meet the complex needs of people with behaviour that challenges particularly those whose behaviour places them at risk of hospital admission, placement breakdown or criminal justice intervention.
The Highly Specialist Occupational Therapy role has a clinical and strategic leadership function within GMSST - offering supervision, support and governance to OT colleagues and contribution to the GMSST senior leadership team. You will provide leadership and highly specialised clinical expertise in Occupational Therapy focusing on rehabilitation and recovery through meaningful occupation based on evidence-based practice.
You will contribute to service development, both within GMSST and externally to improve services working with the referred client group.
The postholder will undertake wider GMSST duties, which may include completion of urgent assessments including risk assessments, chairing meetings and undertaking team duty / responder role. You may be required to participate in on-call arrangements for SST as per business continuity plans.
You must be willing to travel across Greater Manchester working with a number of partner agencies including health, social care and the Criminal Justice agencies. You will be required to work primarily 9-5, Monday to Friday., To carry a clinical caseload and operate as the Occupational Therapy Lead for the Greater Manchester Specialist Support Team; supporting people with a learning disability and / or autism who are at risk of hospital admission, criminal justice intervention or placement breakdown in the community.
Provide leadership and highly specialised clinical expertise in Occupational Therapy focusing on rehabilitation and recovery through meaningful occupation based on evidence-based practice.
To provide clinical and managerial supervision to OT colleagues and students.
Ensure an occupational balance in self-care, productivity and leisure activities for individuals following a range of occupational therapy and sensory assessments to determine function and provide specific interventions with individual goals and outcome measures.
Support the development of independent living skills, including vocations or employment, which promotes social inclusion and improves quality of life, reducing the risk of occupational deprivation.
Utilise core skills of collaboration, assessment, enablement, problem-solving, using activity as a therapeutic tool including activity analysis, adaptation and grading and environmental adaptation and group work when appropriate.
Use a range of assessments tools within a model of practice and frames of reference alongside the Occupational Therapy process.
To undertake a thorough highly specialist assessment of new referrals using a range of tools that requires skilled interpretation and analysis.
To provide comprehensive risk assessment of offending and / or other complex behaviours and provide risk management strategies and recommendations.
Following assessment to derive a formulation and plan of intervention negotiating this with the service user, the MDT and carers where appropriate.
To provide a range of appropriate highly specialist evidence-based interventions based of the assessed need of the referral.
To evaluate the outcome of any interventions.
To undertake on occasions urgent or emergency assessments, including risk
assessments.
To provide recommendations for a gate keeping assessment where appropriate.
To develop complex service specifications and ensure they inform future practice.
Please refer to attached Job Description for a full list of duties and responsibilities.
Please note, the attached job description relates to roles across Mersey Care Trust.
Applicants for this role are expected to have specific experience and interest in supporting individuals with a learning disability and / or autistic people who may present risks to themselves and / or others. Experience of Multi-Disciplinary and Multi-agency working in community settings is essential for the role.
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Only those applicants who demonstrate clearly how they meet our person specification will be shortlisted for interview.
As a Disability Confident Employer, we offer a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants who consider themselves to be disabled who meet the minimum (essential) criteria for the role in the person specification. If you would like your application to be considered under the Trust's guaranteed interview scheme you can indicate this in the personal information section of your online application form.
Should you require a reasonable adjustment to our recruitment process please email [email protected] to ensure that measures can be put in place to support you.
We reserve the right to close any vacancy earlier than advertised in exceptional circumstances once we have received a high volume of applications.
The Trust expects all post holders who require an enhanced DBS for their role subscribe to the DBS Update Service. You will be required to enrol for this service for a fee of £13 per year and maintain registration. Trans applicants who require a DBS check and do not want to reveal details of their previous identity can contact the DBS Sensitive Applications Team or email [email protected]) with their application number once they have completed their DBS application form. The team can prevent any previous identity showing on the DBS Certificate, unless the applicant has a conviction under their previous details in which case this will need to be disclosed.
Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.
Please be advised that the use of Artificial Intelligence on applications is monitored and if you choose to use this, you must declare this on your application form.

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.