East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust
Occupational Therapy Lead – Community
The closing date is 28 April 2026
An exciting opportunity has arisen for an experienced Occupational Therapist to join our teams across the community hospitals. This post provides operational and clinical line management for Therapists, Assistant Practitioners and support staff at Aldeburgh and Felixstowe community hospitals, whilst also providing professional supervision for occupational therapists at Bluebird Lodge and Avocet Court. Your role will ensure therapy services across the community bedded units are delivering high quality, patient focused care and rehabilitation supporting safe and timely discharge.
You will be part of an experienced multidisciplinary team consisting of Nurses, Physiotherapists, Occupational Therapists, Social Care and clinical support staff. You will work closely with your physiotherapist counterpart to manage staffing across the 4 community bedded sites, and will have the opportunity to be involved with local and service wide clinical development and innovation projects.
The successful candidate will have outstanding communication and leadership skills. You should be self‑motivated, have highly developed clinical expertise, be flexible to meet the needs of your patients and service.
This is a chance to work within an established supportive and dynamic multidisciplinary team, where personal clinical development is strongly encouraged and supported. Please note, a full driving licence is essential as this role requires cross site working, including in rural areas.
Main duties of the job
* To be professionally and legally responsible for all aspects of the role including patients in the jobholder's care.
* To provide visible leadership to the multidisciplinary team on a day to day basis.
* To support all members of the MDT with complex professional discussions with patients/relatives/staff.
* To be responsible to completion of incident investigations and lead on serious incident investigations when required to do so.
* To take a lead role in authorising specialist equipment.
* To undertake highly specialised therapy assessments for a wide variety of conditions to establish impairments and disabilities. This will include physical, cognitive, social and environmental assessment, using standardised and/or validated assessment tools where appropriate, in order to facilitate early discharge where possible.
* To liaise as appropriate with members of the MDT those patients who require specialist assessment.
* To be aware of the contra‑indications to assessment/treatment in patients and identify when it is safe/ unsafe to initiate intervention.
* To use advanced communication skills to agree therapy goals with individual patients using previous experience to ensure goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and appropriately timed.
* To monitor and evaluate treatment to measure progress and ensure effectiveness of the intervention to identify quickly when treatment requires modifying.
About us
We are ESNEFT and we provide hospital and community health services to almost one million people across east Suffolk and north Essex. Our dedicated staff deliver care from acute hospitals in Colchester and Ipswich, community hospitals, surgeries, community clinics and in patients' own homes.
We are one of the largest NHS organisations in England, employing more than 12,000 staff.
We pride ourselves on supporting our staff. We offer a wide range of training and development opportunities, as well as flexible working options.
Along with supporting you to achieve your career goals we offer a generous pension scheme, unsocial hours payments (where applicable), 27 days annual leave on commencement (pro rata) and access to a range of NHS discounts. Our Staff Health and Wellbeing programme offer a variety of services.
Our philosophy is that Time Matters to everyone. Across the Trust, we concentrate on improving the things we do and removing those which cause time delays for our staff and patients.
We are investing in our commitment to Time Matters with a partnership with leading electronic patient record (EPR) supplier Epic. This digital transformation will bring what's widely regarded as the world's best EPR system to ESNEFT, transforming life in hospital for staff and patients.
If you are passionate about patient care and want to develop your skills and knowledge, then we want to hear from you.
Job responsibilities
For full details of the responsibilities and duties of this role please see the attached job description.
Qualifications
* BSc/MSc Physiotherapy/Occupational Therapy
* MCSP/ MCOT
* Evidence of continuing professional development including a range of post‑graduate courses
* Evidence of learning at MSc level
* LEO/leadership course
* Membership of RCOT
Experience
* Post registration experience or focused practice equivalent
* Experience in the field of care of the elderly and community
* In‑service training and reflective learning in this speciality in addition to ability to educate therapists, students and a wider multi‑disciplinary team.
* Ability to work as an autonomous practitioner
* Prioritisation of workload for the team, understanding the pressures throughout the Trust
* Experience of managing assistants/technicians/junior therapy staff
* Extensive experience of Multidisciplinary working
* Experience of evidencing and auditing practice
* Membership of Special Interest Group
* Experience of working in an integrated therapy service
* Experience of PowerPoint presenting
* Experience of Complaints management, line management & recruitment
Knowledge
* In‑depth knowledge of care of the elderly services within the integrated care system
* Understanding of discharge to assess and pathways, including complex discharge management
* Principles and practices of rehabilitation with complex patients
* Advanced clinical reasoning and ability to relate to presenting condition
* Managing financial budgets
* Understanding of Clinical governance
* Knowledge of admission prevention
* Knowledge of local community services and value of inter‑agency working
* Role of RCOT, and importance of raising the Therapy profile
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.
East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust
£49,387 to £56,515 a year per annum pro rata
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