The Occupational Therapy Lead will work with the Neurodiversity Team Lead to create a needs-based pathway for children under 6 with neurodivergent learning needs, focusing on high-quality, family-centered care. They will oversee service delivery, evaluate operational impacts, and drive collaboration between the OT and Neurodiversity teams. Responsibilities include maintaining professional standards, monitoring service performance, ensuring clinical quality, and meeting development targets.
The Lead will manage day-to-day service operations, allocate staff and resources effectively, uphold governance standards, and promote evidence-based practices. They will also lead recruitment, clinical training, and supervision of OT staff, and ensure the voice of neurodivergent children and families is central in service planning. In collaboration with health, education, and social services professionals, the Lead will coordinate services and provide expert OT support and training.
Main duties of the job
The Occupational Therapy Lead will assess neurodivergent children, focusing on differential diagnosis and needs-led intervention, using evidence-based practices and current research to guide team training.
Key Responsibilities
1. Caseload Management: Manage complex cases for children aged 0-6, coordinating with community and social services for integrated care.
2. Specialist Skills: Apply advanced techniques to support functional skills, recommending tailored equipment and strategies.
3. Clinical Advice: Provide expert guidance for statutory assessments, manage clinical risks, and ensure evidence-based practices.
4. Team Leadership: Oversee staffing, training, and resource management, supporting recruitment and appraisals.
5. Service Oversight: Ensure standards, targets, and governance compliance, conducting quality audits.
6. Interagency Collaboration: Coordinate with multidisciplinary teams to facilitate seamless service delivery.
7. Family Advocacy: Promote family-centered care, addressing concerns and engaging families in service improvements.
This role includes active clinical education, service audits, and continuous improvement, following North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust terms. The job description will be reviewed periodically with the post holder.
About us
North Mid is part of North Central London integrated care system - consisting of the NHS and Local authority organisations in Camden, Islington, Barnet, Enfield and Haringey. As with other ICS's, we are working increasingly closely with partners and indeed many of our financial and performance objectives are measured at this system level. Whilst all organisations remain as standalone, statutory bodies we have an ICS infrastructure for making shared decisions and agreeing shared approaches.
We are proud of our staff and want to ensure their training allows them to provide excellent clinical care. We are also a training unit for medical students from UCL and St George's University Grenada, and for nursing and midwifery students from Middlesex and City Universities.
Job description
Job responsibilities
For full job details/description and main responsibilities please refer to attached Job description and person specification document.
Person Specification
Education and Qualifications
Essential
* Degree or Diploma in Occupational Therapy.
* Registration with the Health Professions Council.
* Undertaking higher degree/courses relevant to the area of practice.
Desirable
* Member of the Royal college of Occupational therapy and relevant Clinical Interest Group.
Skills and Abilities
Essential
* Able to communicate highly complex and sensitive information in written, verbal and presentational form to patients, staff and senior managers within the Trust and across other organisations.
* Skilled in leading, motivating and influencing a team.
* Highly developed problem-solving skills for highly complex situations, which may include clinical or organizational issues.
* Highly developed clinical reasoning skills.
* Highly developed organizational and planning skills.
* Able to assimilate and analyse complex clinical information.
* Able to identify and recognize when to seek advice and support concerning clinical managerial, professional and organizational issues.
* Highly skilled ability and competency in using a range of acute assessment/treatment skills including, but not exclusively, complex seating and positioning, upper limb splinting, cognitive and behavioral assessments, ADL Assessments.
* Able to identify your own and staff training needs.
* Well-developed counselling and advocacy skills to support staff, patients and carers.
* Able to employ motivational and influencing skills with staff, patients, carers and other professionals.
Desirable
* Excellent leadership skills with the ability to promote team spirit.
Knowledge
Essential
* Basic computer literacy.
* Thorough knowledge of current NHS initiatives.
* Knowledge of Clinical Governance and its application to occupational therapy services.
* Knowledge of occupational therapy professional issues.
* Extensive knowledge of a variety of occupational therapy concepts, approaches and current best practice in the area of practice.
* Extensive knowledge of neurological conditions and pathologies and the current medical management of such conditions.
* Extensive knowledge of outcome measure tools.
* Knowledge of the audit cycle and its uses.
Values
Essential
* Demonstrable ability to meet Trust values.
Experience
Essential
* 5 years post qualifying experience.
* Experience of specialist clinical assessment and treatment of clients across the full range of care settings, including outpatient, community, primary care and in patient settings.
Desirable
* Experience across a range of NHS sectors e.g primary, secondary, tertiary and community services.
* Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision.
Other requirements
Essential
* Willingness to work on any site as service requirements dictate.
* Dedication to staff development and the promotion and progression of the occupational therapy profession.
* Dedicated to holistic patient management.
Employer details
Employer name
North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust
Address
North Middlesex
London
N18 1QX
Any attachments will be accessible after you click to apply.
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