Job overview

Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust SLT team is excited to have the opportunity to recruit a Speech and Language Therapy assistant into our growing stroke rehabilitation service. This is at a time of considerable and exciting change with many opportunities for innovation and service change.

Our inpatient stroke rehabilitation service is based at Rowley Regis Hospital and acute stroke admissions are cared for at Midland Metropolitan University Hospital. The base for this post will be at Rowley Regis Hospital and will focus upon delivering high quality communication and swallowing rehabilitation to patients during their inpatient recovery from stroke. We are a welcoming and aspirational group of therapists with a clear vision and strong commitment to improving the lives of local people. We have a strong focus upon delivering patient-centred care and embedding ‘what matters to you’ care principles into all of our work. We also place equal emphasis upon caring for each other and are proud to work within a trust that champions the health and well-being of its staff.

Main duties of the job

We are looking for an individual passionate about rehabilitation wishing to work directly with patients with communication and swallowing difficulties resulting from stroke. We are looking for a person who can use highly developed interpersonal skills to establish strong relationships with a range of individuals and MDTs. 

Our trust has a fully funded integrated community stroke service so we are able to follow the rehabilitation of our patients from acute to long term community intervention. The focus of this position will be inpatient rehabilitation at Rowley Regis Hospital site however there are rich learning opportunities available across the pathway and occasional travel to support patient at Midlands Metropolitan Hospital site may be required.

Our team is committed to staff development and would be seeking an individual motivated to progress themselves and learn a range of new skills and develop their knowledge about the clinical area.    

SLT operates a weekend service provision for in-patients at Midlands Metropolitan University Hospital. Post holders are required  to participate in this roster and engage in new future models of 7 day working.

Working for our organisation

The Acute Speech and Language Therapy Department work closely with our adult community Speech and Language Therapy colleagues and integrated community stroke service and we have rotational positions and blended roles moving between the services to further strengthen our working relationships.

We have regular departmental meetings, clinical supervision sessions and education meetings. Continuing professional development is very well supported with dedicated development sessions weekly for all individuals and monthly team evidence based practice reviews.

The department champions and supports student training across the full range of placements and is seeking to expand its offer to student education as we move forwards.

There is excellent administrative support, good IT facilities and access to modern trust library facilities.

Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS trust is located near major road and rail networks with easy access to Birmingham. There are a wide range of leisure facilities locally.

Multi-site working 

The four partner Trusts of the Black Country Provider Collaborative (Dudley Group NHS FT, Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust, Sandwell & West Birmingham NHS Trust, and Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust) are actively working in partnership to deliver a collective vision focused on providing "better, faster and safer care to the population of the Black Country and beyond". 

To support this vision, we are (where appropriate and safe to do so) actively looking at new models of care which:

Against this context, although this post is hosted by Sandwell & West Birmingham NHS Trust, there may be an expectation to work flexibly across the four partner Trusts to better meet patient and service needs.