Highly Specialist Speech and Language Therapist

Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust is the health provider for the delivery of an Integrated Mental Health Team (IMHT) within HMP Liverpool and HMP Altcourse. The service is designed to support the holistic mental health needs of our client group in partnership with other Health providers and HMPPS colleagues.

HMP Liverpool and HMP Altcourse are both Category B, male only, local prisons, in the Liverpool area.

The services provide individual, and soon will provide group-based interventions, based on the needs of the population. The service is developing and will adopt the biopsychological model to inform practice and tailor interventions accordingly. These interventions will be individualised, and trauma informed, alongside comprehensive risk assessment and management.

Core aims of the service are to improve mental and psychological wellbeing via a range of interventions, build the development of independent core skills, reduce risk, and advocate for mental health within the wider prison.

The post holder will be joining a dedicated team of clinical and from a range of backgrounds and experience. Team members have high levels of skill, passion and enthusiasm (and humour!) and are committed to ensuring the on-going successful development of the service and the opportunities it provides for our population.

The post holder should have considerable experience of working with individuals with complex clinical and risk presentations including within institutional settings and as part of a multi-disciplinary team. This should include work with clients whose needs may mean that they find it difficult to engage with services.

Experience of working in complex service and organisational settings is required alongside an ability to constructively manage the personal, professional, and ethical opportunities and challenges such work can involve.

We are committed to creating an empowered staff team. We strive to be reflective and support of each other which is vital given the challenges this work can entail.

We are now recruiting a full-time Highly Specialist Speech and Language Therapist (SaLT) to work across both sites at HMP Altcourse and HMP Liverpool. The service at HMP Liverpool has had SaLT provision for the last two years, this work has proven to be hugely effective with the client group and has become a very valued and respected profession within the team. The successful post-holder will work alongside a part-time Highly Specialist SaLT at HMP Liverpool.

The successful candidate will contribute to the effective on-going delivery of the SaLT service within HMP Liverpool and will lead on the development of the SaLT service at HMP Altcourse. The post holder will have clinical and leadership elements within their role., 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.