Occupational TherapistNHS

Job summary

Are you an enthusiastic and proactive Occupational Therapist ready to make a real difference in people's lives while advancing your career in a supportive, forward-thinking organisation?

An exciting opportunity for Band 6 Occupational Therapists to join our dynamic Urgent and Intermediate Care (ICRAS) therapy team within Liverpool & South Sefton. We're looking passionate, proactive, and skilled professionals who thrive in collaborative environments and committed to delivering outstanding care.

ICRAS delivers rapid, responsive care preventing unnecessary hospital admissions and supports early discharges. A service that bridges health and social care, working across the Urgent Community Response (UCR), Care Transfer Hub, and Intermediate Care Bed Base. We operate 7 days a week, including bank holidays, ensuring continuity of care for our communities. There will be an expectation to support across wider Urgent Care Service Line during times of pressures to support capacity.

Work alongside highly skilled team including Physiotherapists, Assistant Practitioners, Community Discharge Matrons and Nurses. Together, we deliver holistic, person-centered care that maximises independence and prevents unnecessary hospital admissions.

Whether you're stepping up from Band 5 or looking to expand your leadership skills, we offer structured development pathways, supervision, leadership opportunities and involvement in service improvement projects.

Main duties of the job

As an autonomous practitioner, you will manage a diverse caseload of adults with complex co-morbidities, delivering high-quality, evidence-based, and person-centred care. You'll take a holistic approach to assessment and intervention, using appropriate models of care to support patients in achieving their goals and maintaining independence within their chosen environment--helping to prevent unnecessary hospital admissions.

You'll play a key role in shaping and developing Occupational Therapy services within your designated team, leading defined projects and contributing to service innovation. Leadership is integral to this role, and you'll support junior staff through supervision and appraisal, fostering a culture of learning and professional growth.

Working collaboratively across multidisciplinary teams, you'll help maintain and enhance the Occupational Therapy profession within ICRAS, supporting students and practitioners through effective learning opportunities and professional development.

Joining a team that values collaboration, compassion, and continuous learning.

Car driver desirable to be able to travel across the city to support community caseload.

Job description

Detailed Job Description and Main Responsibilities

To undertake comprehensive holistic assessments, devise treatment plans individualised to patient needs, reviewing and adapting during patient journey from initial assessment through to discharge.

To gain consent through engaging patients / clients through their therapy journey, enabling them to experience choice and as part of their recovery.

To prioritise designated Occupational Therapy referrals according to need, risk and service capacity

To plan and implement patient centred individual and/or group interventions, using graded activity to achieve therapeutic goals including sensory integration difficulties within ward/rehab hub setting.

To monitor, evaluate and modify treatment in order to measure progress and ensure effectiveness of intervention.

To apply a high level of understanding of the effect of disability and provide training and advice on lifestyle changes and adaptations to the patients social and physical environment.

To provide clinical advice, expertise and leadership within your team.

To monitor and offer professional advice and leadership to all team members with regards to their caseloads and working practices.

To ensure that the service users care plan is developed to meet the assessed need of the individual. To monitor, via performance management, the care plans developed for service users by all sector members to ensure that they are appropriate and of a high standard.

To liaise with family members, carers, GPs and other professionals as necessary when completing the assessment and developing a care plan.

To be a point of contact for service users and carers that have concerns regarding their care, making every effort to resolve their concerns sensitively and promptly, referring to and informing the Team Manager as necessary.

To develop a risk management plan for service users under your care, taking note of the contributions from other members of the team. Ensure that all significant people are aware of the risk management plan and are actioning it appropriately. To monitor and work with all team members to ensure that service user risk is managed appropriately and that risk management plans are of a high quality. Understanding risk assessment, being able to assessrisk and complete management plans.

To lead the systematic monitoring and evaluation of service users under the care of the sector you have responsibility for.

Monitor and ensure high standards relating to the planning and delivery of Occupational Therapy activities and comply with The Royal College of Occupational Therapists Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, contributing to good health and the importance of promoting these in line with organisational public health policy.

To monitor the provision of a range of therapeutic activities for service users by supervision of sector members caseloads and via audit.

To use skills gained through training and experience to de-escalate situations where service users become physically or verbally aggressive. Use your judgement, gained from experience, to establish if a service user requires assessment by a medic or possibly hospital admission.

To use skills gained through experience to deal with service users who become anxious, hostile or distressed.

To ensure all sector members get appropriate support following violent incidents and liaise with the Team Manager to ensure any identified actions arising from such incidents are implemented.

To participate in and/or lead service user reviews ensuring that service user needs are met and that the team has all the relevant information on which to base their clinical decisions.

To develop care plans that enable service users to reach and maintain their optimum level of health and independence to help them to remain in the community in their chosen setting or return to this on discharge.

To demonstrate an understanding of capacity and mental capacity Act.

About us

Mersey Care is one of the largest NHS 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.