Senior Occupational Therapist
The closing date is 23 March 2026
An exciting opportunity has arisen for an experienced, proactive and motivated Occupational Therapist within our multidisciplinary Community Response Services team, based at Cobalt Business Exchange.
Our team look to provide crisis and planned assessment and intervention in the community to help avoid unnecessary admission and re‑admission to hospital.
The post holder will work with colleagues and patients to help deliver a 2‑hour urgent response or same‑day response to health and social care crisis. They will also support patients requiring assessments and rehabilitation having been discharged from hospital into the community setting and triage referrals. There are opportunities to work with patients across a wide range of health conditions.
Our team comprises of Physiotherapists, Occupational Therapists, Technical Instructors and Associate Therapy Practitioners. We work closely alongside our Nurse Practitioner and pharmacy colleagues.
If you would like to discuss the post further, we welcome visits from interested candidates.
Our service operates 8am – 8pm, 7 days a week. Working patterns within these hours will be considered to accommodate individual needs, in line with needs of the service.
Main duties of the job
* To ensure service provision is prioritised and service delivery is made effectively within resource constraints.
* To manage a defined caseload of patients, using evidence‑based clinical reasoning to assess, plan, implement and evaluate interventions.
* To assess for and monitor the provision of adaptations when appropriate.
* To provide clinical education, supervision and support to staff and students within the specialist field and Community Response Services.
* To provide specialist advice to families, carers, and other health and social care professionals.
* To participate in the planning, development and evaluation of OT services within a designated area/team, holding responsibility for defined projects through specialist interest and steering groups.
* To contribute to the maintenance and development of the Community Response Service across Northumbria Healthcare Trust. To practice within the multidisciplinary team, providing specialist Occupational Therapy assessments, diagnosis and treatment using clinical reasoning skills.
About us
We manage three major locality hospitals at North Tyneside, Wansbeck and Hexham, plus a number of smaller community hospitals and clinics from Tynemouth to Berwick on Tweed, in addition to our state‑of‑the‑art Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital, the first of its kind in England. We also care for people in their homes and provide services from facilities in local communities such as health centres. We give people greater choice and control over their care to help them to live independently at home and avoid hospital admission where appropriate. High quality patient care is at the heart of everything we do and we strive to ensure every single patient and service user has an exceptional experience with us. We have one of the most extensive patient experience programmes of any trust in England.
Job responsibilities
* To work as part of a multidisciplinary team to provide efficient and effective facilitation of the patient journey through hospital and in community, to achieve safe and timely discharge, seamless transitions and help avoid unnecessary admission and re‑admission to hospital.
* To carry out appraisals with junior and support staff, as delegated by Team Lead.
* Managerially responsible to Team Lead.
* Clinically responsible to OT Clinical Lead.
* To role‑model compassionate and inclusive leadership in order to shape the creation of a collective leadership culture within the trust. This means demonstrating a consistent leadership style which (a) engages, enables and empowers others (b) uses coaching to promote ownership of learning and quality improvement and (c) facilitates team working and collaboration within teams/departments and across organisational boundaries.
Person Specification
Qualifications
* BSc. (Hons) degree/diploma in Occupational Therapy or equivalent.
* State registered with Health Professions Council.
* HPC Registered.
Experience
* Documented evidence of continuing professional development.
* Substantial post‑registration experience with relevant experience in specialist area including individual and group work.
Other
* It is an essential requirement that the post holder has a valid driving licence and is either a car owner and able to use the car for work purposes, or has a Trust personal lease vehicle which may be used for the role. However the Trust would consider making reasonable adjustments to the role, if necessary, to enable a disabled person to undertake the role.
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.
Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
£38,682 to £46,580 a year pro rata per annum
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