Operational Lead Speech

An exciting new challenge has arisen for highly skilled speech and language therapist (SALT) to join Oxleas NHS trust in our South West prisons. This is a brand-new service and we are looking for an experienced Speech and Language Therapist to lead on setting up a clinical model and pathway within our Bristol, South Gloucestershire & Wiltshire (BSGW), Devon, and Dorset clusters.

You will join our highly specialist multidisciplinary teams across 10 prisons and have line management responsibilities for 3 band 7 Speech and Language Therapists. These individuals will support your vision and integration into our established healthcare services. Each band 7 will be allocated a region for clinical need.

Your team will complement our multidisciplinary team and bridge the gap between existing learning disability (LD) provision and offender healthcare services providing leadership in assessments, consultation and co-working with complex clients with LD and autism who present a risk of harm to others. The service will also support service users with a complex mix of neurodevelopmental, speech, language, and communication, dysphagia, mental health, and intellectual disability needs who are high-risk, high-harm, high-vulnerability individuals.

This role can be based at any of our 10 sites within the South West (Bristol, Devon, Dorset & Wiltshire) and travel across all sites is required.

As the Operational Lead SALT you will provide professional leadership, supervision and a mentoring role for Speech & Language Therapists (SLTs) within Southwest prisons (team of 3 Band 7's). You will be responsible for the development of SLT services within the multidisciplinary team and to act as a key contributor in the development of the Specialist services within the Southwest prisons.

You will be an expert on issues pertaining to SLT and neurology and provide advice and training to all stake holders, be a key contributor to clinical audit and research and p rovide specialist input/advice into the strategic development of the service.

You will be responsible for the clinical activity of the SLTs working in the team under the supervision structure and assess, develop and implement highly specialist SLT treatment to ensure high standards of SLT within the services.

Your case load will primarily consist of adults with a neurological disorder and resultant physical and psychosocial problems: cognitive impairment, swallowing and language difficulties. However, there is a need for SALT treatments to the wider offender population so you and your team will deal with a vast, diverse caseload of patients.

Oxleas offers a wide range of NHS healthcare services to people in community and secure environment settings. Our services include community health care such as district nursing and speech and language therapy, care for people with learning disabilities and mental health care such as psychiatry, nursing and therapies. Our multidisciplinary teams look after people of all ages and we work in close partnership with other parts of the NHS, local councils and the voluntary sector and through our new provider collaboratives. Our 4,300 members of staff work in many different settings including hospitals, clinics, prisons, secure hospitals, children’s centres, schools and people’s homes.

We have over 125 sites in a variety of locations in the South of England. In London we operate within the Boroughs of Bexley, Bromley Greenwich and into Kent. We manage hospital sites including Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup and Memorial Hospital, Woolwich, as well as the Bracton Centre, our medium secure unit for people with mental health needs. We are the largest NHS provider of prison health services providing healthcare to prisons within Devon, Dorset, Bristol, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, Kent and South London. We are proud of the care we provide and our people.

Our purpose is to improve lives by providing the best possible care to our patients and their families. This is strengthened by our new values:
We’re Kind
We’re Fair
We Listen
We Care

Oxleas offers a wide range of NHS healthcare services to people in community and secure environment settings. We are the largest NHS provider of prison health services providing healthcare to prisons within Devon, Dorset, Bristol, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, Kent and South London.

Our healthcare departments operate across ten prisons in the South West, split in to three clusters. Each of which require a bespoke service responding to the prisoner and prison needs:
**BSGW**:
HMP Ashfield - Cat C - Population = 412

HMP Bristol - Cat B - Population = 638

HMP Erlestoke - Cat C - Population = 494

HMP Leyhill - Cat D (Open) - Population = 460

**Devon**:
HMP Channings Wood - Cat C - Population = 731

HMP Dartmoor - Cat C - Population = 659

HMP Exeter - Cat B (Remand) - Population = 412

**Dorset**:
HMP Guys Marsh - Cat C - Population = 550

HMP Portland - Cat C - Population = 530

HMP The Verne - Cat