Speech and language therapist

• Do you want to make a difference to early years and school aged children with communication needs and their families?
• Are you passionate about empowering education staff and parents to help children reach their full potential?
• Are you looking to develop your clinical skills within a diverse and experienced team?

If you answered yes, we've got the perfect role for you!

We are a large, friendly and supportive team who offer children an integrated approach to therapy through holistic assessment and intervention.

We are seeking a newly qualified therapist or a band 5 looking to expand their experience, with an interest in supporting children with diverse communication needs in school, early years and special school settings.

We have a well developed mentor and peer support scheme for newly qualified and more experienced therapists. This includes regular clinical supervision and opportunities for both in-house and external training as well as attending relevant CENs to support continued professional development. We actively support our team to develop specialist interests in a range of areas. This can include opportunities in: speech sound disorders, developmental language disorder (DLD), voice, stammering, autism, selective mutism and dysphagia.

We welcome applications from final year speech and language therapy students who are completing their studies and awaiting HCPC registration.

Main duties of the job

• To work as an autonomous practitioner, to deliver a speech and language service within preschool, school, special school and clinic settings covering the 0-19 age range.
• To provide assessment, intervention and advice for children, their families and carers within the early years, special school and mainstream school caseload.
• To empower school staff and parents to support and develop children's communication needs.

About us

So what else?

This is your chance to join a progressive and innovative service in a social enterprise that is patient and staff focused - you'll even have the opportunity to become an MCH shareholder.

We encourage staff to get involved in exploring new ways of working and service development.

We'll provide well established, in-service training, one to one supervision, and appraisals with regular support.

You'll be able to develop your skills in a friendly and supportive team.

Would you like to work flexibly? In the NHS, we are reminded every day of how important work life balance is. As a flexible working friendly organisation, we want to be sure that you can work in a way that is best for us, for our patients and for you. Speak to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement.

Job responsibilities

1. Communication and relationship skills

• To work alongside other speech & language therapy colleagues providing support and professional exchange of ideas and experience.
• To attend appropriate meetings within the speech & language therapy service and children's therapy team.
• To contribute to clinical teams by discussing own and others input around clients needs ensuring a well-coordinated care plan.
• To communicate complex condition related information from assessment to clients, carers, families and members of the multidisciplinary team/other professions.
• To communicate condition related information to clients who have communication problems themselves.
• To work closely with clients, carers and families, agreeing decision making relevant to the client management.
• To demonstrate empathy with clients, carers and families and colleagues, ensuring that effective communication is achieved, particularly where barriers to understanding exist. To demonstrate skills in motivating clients and carers to engage in the therapeutic process.

2. Knowledge, training and experience

• To identify personal and professional development evidenced by a personal development plan as part of the appraisal process.
• To maintain professional standards by attending appropriate training including short courses and development relating to the clinical specialism to maintain up to date HPC and RCSLT registration.
• To demonstrate knowledge of and adherence to RCSLT professional clinical guidelines.
• To demonstrate knowledge in clinical specialism underpinned by current evidence-based practice.
• To demonstrate a working knowledge of relevant procedures including safeguarding children, SEN procedure and other legal requirements.
• To demonstrate a working knowledge of the principles of clinical governance and their application to professional practice.
• To participate in the development of local clinical guidelines informed by evidence of clinical specialism.
• To participate in the development and delivery of training of other professional groups and carers.
• To support placements for speech & language therapy students and prospective speech & language therapy students.
• To explain the role of speech & language therapy(ist) in work settings.
• To demonstrate the ability to reflect on and evaluate training provided.
• To undertake general administrative and client related administrative tasks in line with speech & language therapy service operational policies.
• To maintain client records in accordance with RCSLT professional standards and local trust operational policies and quality standards.
• To provide accurate statistical information as required.
• To produce reports circulated to a wide range of professional colleagues across agencies, clients and carers regarding clients needs and summarising proposed care plans.
• To share information with others observing data protection guidelines.

3. Analytical and judgement skills

• To assess patient understanding of treatment proposals, gain valid informed consent and have the capacity to work within a legal framework with patients who lack the capacity to consent to treatment.

4. Planning and organisational skills

• To be responsible for organising and planning own caseload and work demands to meet patient and service priorities, in conjunction with the service lead and informing the service lead of excessive demands and effects on patient care.

5. Physical skills

• To undertake assessment of patients with a wide variety of presentations and conditions: using clinical reasoning skills and assessment techniques to formulate individualised treatment plans and programmes.

6. Responsibility for patient / client care

• To provide a comprehensive patient focused service to children living in the Medway area.
• To deliver speech and language programmes, and intervention and support others to deliver these interventions.
• To continually reassess patient progress, adapting programmes and treatment accordingly and developing discharge plans.

7. Responsibility for policy and service development implementation

• To be aware of and adhere to service and team plans and policies including integrated/multi-agency working.

8. Responsibilities for financial and physical resources

• To be responsible for the safe and competent use of all equipment and facilities, ensuring faulty items are removed from use and reported for action.
• To be aware of health and safety aspects of your work and implement any policies, which may be required to improve the safety of your work area, including your prompt recording and reporting of accidents or concerns.
• To manage clinical and non-clinical risk, within own role according to team and MCH protocols, including the development of individual patient clinical risk assessments.

9. Responsibilities for human resources (HR)

• Participate in the organisations staff appraisal system as an appraise including the agreement of a personal development plan.

10. Responsibilities for information resources

• To collect and submit all data and statistics as required in a timely and accurate manner.
• To record patient contacts onto the RIO system used by the organisation for recording all information relating to patients you are currently treating.

11. Responsibilities for research and development (R&D)

• To participate in team and service audits and research projects.

12. Freedom to act

To abide by the rules of professional conduct of the royal college of speech and language therapists.

Person Specification

Qualifications

• Recognised speech and language therapy degree qualification or equivalent
• Relevant short courses and training

Registration

• HCPC registration (eligible for or received)

Experience

• Appropriate undergraduate placement experience with a paediatric caseload
• Direct experience of working with children with SLCN

Knowledge

• Knowledge of a range of appropriate assessment and intervention approaches

MCH Values

• Caring and compassionate, deliver quality and value, working in partnership

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Highly Specialist Speech and Language Therapist