Occupational Therapist

Job Title: Occupational Therapist - Gateway Assessment & Gateway Connections 
Location: Countywide
Starting Salary: £33,820 with the opportunity to progress to a maximum of £37,261
Hours: Full time and part time positions available
Contract: Permanent 

Relocation package, £1,000 welcome payment & lease car* Terms Apply

Are you looking for an exciting new challenge? We are looking for Qualified Occupational Therapists to join our new Connected Lives Gateway Service.  We work with Older People, and Adults with Disabilities. This service aims to prevent, reduce and delay need by ensuring people access a wide range of information/advice, intervention, and support at the right time and in the most uncomplicated way possible.

To support the Gateway Service, deliver this vision, and in line with our Connected Lives Assessment framework, we are expanding our prevention and enablement workforce to include Occupational Therapists.  We envisage our Occupational Therapists to combine a caseload with a strong mentoring and consultation role within the teams they work in. Offering guidance & support with functional assessments and developing a whole-service approach to supporting the Functional assessment role, embedding learning & ensuring competency within the wider team.

The Gateway Service is a unique opportunity to work preventively and ensure people have the right information, advice, equipment, and housing adaptations to enable them to live a full life. You will carry out first assessments, including eligibility decision, personal budget and care and support planning based on an up to 12-week pathway.

This will require working collaboratively with Specialist Care at Home and bed-based enablement providers. This will include operational links with the Voluntary, Community, Faith, and Social Enterprise preventative strategy, Herts Help and social prescribing. Relationships will also be developed with Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (HPFT) Single Point of Access, the Frailty single point of contact, & Health partners

You will promote and support a strength-based approach to therapy intervention to maximise independence, health, and well-being. This will require assessing and making recommendations for non-complex and complex pieces of equipment via telephone and community-based assessments.

You will need to be a confident individual, with the ability to work autonomously with complex cases, enabling people to live independently in the community.  You will need to have a flexible approach to support the Gateway service and teams within it.

You will be working to action assessments & joint assessments including minor adaptations & provision of equipment to achieve desired outcomes. You will participate in contributing to the learning and development of others, including mentoring and supervision. You will need an agile, flexible & ‘can do’ approach to support the Gateway service and the teams within it

You will be proactive in your approach and possess good partnership skills working both within the different service areas in Gateway, and with external partners.

You must be a Registered OT with HCPC.

We are an inclusive employer and value a diverse workforce and you will gain a unique and extensive experience in the field of adult social care, safeguarding practice and multi-disciplinary working. We promote personalisation focusing on the wellbeing of the individual as we strive for increased independence, choice and control by enabling people to direct their own support.

This will be achieved through working alongside Community Care Officers to offer guidance and case support with Occupational Therapy assessment needs, discussions and applying your knowledge of local services to support people to access appropriate community resources. In more detail this will include: 

• Holding an appropriate caseload
• Assisting Management Team with supervising the day-to-day performance of an operational team in line with quality and standards.
• Cascade information on the corporate context so that organisational messages are understood in the team and
• disseminating & coaching best practices to help teams understand and enact changes and improvement.

This is a rolling adverts. Applications will be checked weekly. 

For an informal discussion and more information please contact: Jayne Crockett 01438 843183 James Medus  01438 843546, Sarah Simpson 07458 064268, Richard Farmer 0300 1234042