Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust is the health provider for the delivery of care to people with learning disabilities who require specialist health interventions. The service is designed to support the holistic care for people with learning disabilities in the Knowsley area.
The role of the highly specialist speech and language therapist consists of supporting people with learning disabilities who have complex communication needs, management of dysphagia, management of waiting lists and working as MDT to provide person centred holistic care.
We are now recruiting a full-time Highly Specialist Speech and Language Therapist (SaLT) to work within the learning disability team in Knowsley and sometimes supporting St Helens Team. The main duties of the role consist of:
1. Full management responsibility for managing and prioritising caseload.
2. Supervise other speech and language therapists and support workers in the team.
4. To provide clinical leadership and training to the wider staff team with regards to speech, language and communication.
5. To provide in depth specialist speech and language therapy assessments for the more complex service users referred to the team.
6. To formulate and implement support plans as part of the MDT.
7. Advising team manager about capacity / gaps in service delivery / operational issues.
8. To facilitate the education of service users, relatives and other agencies concerned with provision of learning disability services in the community.
11. To ensure Safeguarding requirements are upheld.
12. Promote health and reduce inequalities for all patients accessing the speech and language therapy service.
13. Use highly developed skills to convey complex and sensitive clinical information, using a high level of persuasive and motivational skill to enable others to follow swallowing/therapy plans.
Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 1.4 million people across our region and are also commissioned for services that cover the North West, North Wales and the Midlands.
We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities.
At the heart of all we do is our commitment to ‘perfect care’ – care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together. We’re currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so.
Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.
To provide high quality consultation, specialist assessment and intervention of speech, language and communication needs.
To support the development of the Speech and Language Therapy service and strive for continuous improvement.
To take a lead on and provide evidence-based Speech and Language
Therapy assessment, treatment and intervention to service users who have complex needs.
This role will be integrated in the therapy team and will work with the team to develop person centred care.
Supervision will be provided within the trust as applicable.
This advert closes on Friday 23 Jan 2026