Occupational Therapy Technician

Are you a person who enjoys working with people and is an excellent communicator? Are you looking for an opportunity to be involved with a team comprising of people who care passionately about a good patient experience and enabling recovery? Are you the kind of person who enjoys challenges, learning and developing you skills?

If so we have a rare opportunity for a secondment as an Occupational Therapy Assistant working within the Restart and Recovery team at Pendleview. The successful candidate will work within the occupational therapy service alongside a strong multidisciplinary team helping people with acute mental health issues to achieve a successful and timely discharge from hospital. We are looking for someone with a compassionate nature who can communicate successfully with people who have different abilities and presentations. They will be a team-player who can undertake some duties independently and at times act upon their own initiative. Knowledge of social inclusion and housing and benefits would be an advantage, alongside having excellent workload management skills. Experience of leading groups, working individually with people and using activity to help promote independence would also be a desirable ability.

The occupational therapy team consists of qualified Occupational therapists, Occupational therapy assistants, and Recovery Support Workers, all of who focus on enabling patients to achieve optimum independence as part of recovering their ordinary lives., "Occupational therapy aims to improve health and wellbeing through enabling participation in occupation (the activities, roles and routines of everyday life). Occupational therapists recognise that engagement in meaningful occupation can promote good mental health, assist recovery and help people achieve personalised outcomes such as being able to care for themselves, engage in work and leisure activities, and participate within the community.

Timely occupational therapy (assessment and) interventions can: prevent unnecessary hospital admissions; improve wellbeing and patient experience; facilitate early discharge; enable recovery and social inclusion; help people achieve personalised goals; and support adults of working age to retain their jobs or obtain employment."

Royal College of Occupational Therapy (2017).

Working directly with service users for at least 70% of the time, this post holder will support occupational therapists to achieve this aim through supporting the assessment and analyse of strengths and needs, providing interventions, reporting on progress, and supporting service users to care to achieve their personal goals and aspirations.

Service requirements may involve some flexibility of work hours and the post holder is expected to respond to service user need relating to this.

Lancashire & South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust provides a range of services including secondary mental health care across this area. Specialist provision comprises inpatient child and adolescent mental health services, perinatal mental health and forensic services including low and medium secure care.

The Trust also provides a range of physical health and well-being services in the community alongside a range of partners in the Lancashire, Cumbria and Sefton area.

Lancashire & South Cumbria Foundation Trust encourages flexible working, we believe that a positive work/life balance benefits NHS employees through improved health and wellbeing. We would consider working patterns such as; term time, part time, compressed hours, flexi-time and career breaks. We encourage applicants to state clearly on their application forms this request and discuss these options at interview.