Specialist Speech

We have an exciting opportunity for an experienced, motivated and well-organised Speech and Language Therapist to join our friendly children’s team. We are keen to recruit a specialist clinician to work with children and young people with complex speech disorders.

The service has bases in Peterlee, Stanley and Willington and applicant preferences will be taken into consideration where possible.

As a key member of the team you will be passionate about working with children and young people, as well as those around them including other professionals, parents and carers.
You will be a great communicator and enjoy working both independently and as part of a team in different settings, including clinics, homes and education venues.
You will work with children and young people with complex speech disorders and provide leadership and support to less experienced members of the team. You will work in close collaboration with the Lead Clinician in developing the service to this client group.

You will be part of a supportive and professional service with good admin support. There are excellent working relationships with colleagues within schools and local authorities, and the service has a strong commitment to CPD.

At North Tees & Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust our main priority is, and always will be, to provide safe and high quality care to our patients every day; the kind of care we would want for ourselves and our loved ones. We want our organisation to be the best place to work with the right staff, in the right roles, at the right time, to ensure we deliver exceptional patient care and experience.

We are an Active Hospital and strongly encourage participation of all staff and patients. We expect MECC for all our people interactions.

We will support staff through providing an inclusive and supportive workplace with health and well-being initiatives, staff benefits and opportunities for personal and professional development. Staff recognition is very important to us; as well as performance reviews and appraisals, we recognise staff through Star and Team of the month, colleague recognition - a note of thanks, Managers Awards, Shining Stars and Service Awards.

We recruit for values and “Together we are North Tees & Hartlepool”

**Key responsibilities are outlined below**:
1. Generate appropriate strategies to manage an individual specialist caseload including the assessment, diagnosis, treatment and discharge of a diverse range of clients with complex speech disorders with support and supervision from a lead clinician.

2. Develop and implement specialist care protocols and programmes of care and treatment, to meet the needs of clients in conjunction with their parents, carers, education staff and other members of the appropriate multi-disciplinary team (MDT) with support and supervision from a lead clinician.

3. Independently manage and negotiate the management of complex cases with others e.g. onward referral to highly specialist clinicians or other specialist support agencies e.g. consultants, Educational Psychologists.

4. To contribute to developing an evidence-based pathway for children and young people with specific expressive language disorders.

5. To ensure clients/families are involved in the planning and prioritisation of their care plans wherever possible.

6. Provide specialist education, training and supervision to speech and language therapy assistant practitioners and to speech and language therapists with less experience in the management of the client group, with appropriate supervision from the clinical lead.

7. Provide specialist advice and second opinions to less experienced colleagues.

8. Continually evaluate the effectiveness of care protocols and packages of care, audit and implement changes as appropriate in conjunction with lead clinician/line manager.