Job summary
- Main area
- Allied Health Professionals
- Grade
- NHS AfC: Band 8a
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full time
- Part time
- Job ref
- 455-NLFT-0723
- Employer
- North London NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Trustwide
- Town
- London
- Salary
- £64,156 - £71,148 Per annum including HCAS (pro-rata)
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 07/04/2026 23:59
Employer heading
Physical Health Therapies Lead
NHS AfC: Band 8a
Thank you for your interest in the North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT). This is an exciting time to join us and be part of our journey to improve mental health care across North London and deliver excellent services to our local people. We will achieve this through the North London Way, as we:
- Collaborate at every level by living our values to create the right conditions for us all to work together.
- Develop our new Trust culture, to help make our new Trust a great place to work and to receive great care.
- Empower our teams to lead the planned improvements in our services, by skilling them and giving them the tools to make the changes.
- Focus on delivering excellence at every level to improve our performance and ensure consistently high-quality care across all our services.
- Ensure that research, quality improvement, and technology lead the way and are embedded in our services.
- Take a trauma informed approach to everything we do
We proactively welcome diversity in our workforce and pride ourselves on being an inclusive employer. We aim to recruit from our local communities and provide opportunities to all including apprenticeships, veterans, care leavers and more.
The North London Way to deliver: Better Mental Health, Better Lives, Better Communities.
Our trust website is: https://www.northlondonmentalhealth.nhs.uk/
As a values‑driven Trust, we recruit through our values. Our selection processes focus on behaviours, attitudes, and examples that reflect our organisational values and commitment to compassionate, high‑quality care.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a set of technology that can perform various tasks that typically required human intelligence. Your application is your opportunity to demonstrate to us how you meet the requirements of the role.
We recognise that AI tools can support accessibility, equity and confidence for applicants. However, it’s important that examples and responses genuinely reflect your own experience and abilities, as these will be explored further during the selection process. AI must not be used to provide misleading or false information during any stage of the application journey.
Further guidance can be found in the NLPSS Applicant Toolkit https://royalfree.pagetiger.com/cuuomnr/1.
North London NHS Foundation Trust is committed to fair and transparent recruitment and requires applicants to provide accurate information, as misleading details may affect their application or employment and may be verified in line with the Fraud Act 2006. For further information please visit https://royalfree.pagetiger.com/cuuomnr/1.
Job overview
Recognising the key role of Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) in bridging the gap between mental and physical health to address health inequalities in line with the NHS Long Term Plan, we are delighted to offer an exceptional opportunity for a dynamic Physiotherapist to lead our Physical Health Therapies service for adult inpatients across the North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT).
This is a pivotal role and would suit an experienced clinical leader with the drive and passion to deliver high-quality therapy services to people with mental health conditions.
The successful applicant will be an integral member of our AHP Leadership team, providing professional leadership across our AHP community the Unplanned Care Group and will be supported by the Unplanned Care Head AHPs.
We also actively encourage and support a range of continuing personal and professional development, quality improvement and research and innovation opportunities.
Main duties of the job
- The Physical Health Therapies service will deliver Physiotherapy and Speech and Language Therapy, as well Dietetics and Podiatry provision. The service will work in collaboration with established AHP teams and other Physical Health colleagues within each inpatient service to deliver physical health interventions for adult service users on mental health wards within the North London NHS Foundation Trust.
- The postholder will provide clinical, operational, and professional leadership and management to the Physical Health Therapies service (and wider AHP services as required) and be responsible for the design, delivery, and development of high-quality care within this new service in line with advances in evidence-informed practice, digital transformation, commissioning changes, etc.
- They will autonomously utilise highly specialist knowledge and skills to provide assessment, diagnosis, and management to services users with physical health presentations, thus optimising the clinical pathway, and guide and support others to do the same. Additionally, this post will act as the manual handling lead for Allied Health Professionals in the care group, supporting AHP staff with training, modelling and guiding on best practice.
Working for our organisation
North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT) is committed to improving mental health care across North London to deliver excellent services to our local people.
Our Five-Year Strategy:
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We will provide consistently high-quality care closer to home.
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With our partners in North London and each borough we will ensure equity of outcome for all
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We will offer great places to work, providing staff with supportive environment to deliver outstanding care.
Why NLFT?
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We develop and retain our staff through leadership behaviours and managers programme and many more opportunities.
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We promote flexible working and support staff with a range of health and wellbeing initiatives.
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NHS Discounts, generous annual leave and NHS pension scheme
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Excellent internal staff network
In order to meet the needs of the Trust you may be required from time to time to work at different locations to your normal place of work. This may mean that you are required to work at any location that fall under Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey or Islington. The Trust reserves the right to require staff to work at such other places or locations as it considers reasonable and necessary on a temporary or permanent basis.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Detailed job description and main responsibilities are outlined in the attached document, titled Job Description and Person Specification
Person specification
Qualifications and Registrations
Essential criteria
- Degree level professional qualification, HCPC Registration
- MSc or equivalent experience, postgraduate courses in related area of expertise
Desirable criteria
- Member of relevant CIG, Quality Improvement, and Leadership training
Skills/Abilities
Essential criteria
- Highly specialist level of clinical skills - able to implement appropriate assessment, diagnoses and treatment for complex physical health presentations.
- Complex planning and organisational skills, including project management, high level of analytical and judgement skills
- Demonstrable leadership skills, able to develop, lead, manage and support staff.
Experience and Knowledge
Essential criteria
- Experience of working with service users with mental health presentations and knowledge of mental health clinical pathways
- Operational leadership and management, including change management, demand and capacity planning; reporting for KPIs
- Experience and knowledge of clinical quality and safety, including risk management
Desirable criteria
- Experience of working in a mental health setting
Personal qualities
Essential criteria
- Compassionate Leadership qualities
- Able to demonstrate partnership values in practice
Applicant requirements
You must have appropriate UK professional registration.
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.
Documents to download
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Jessica Lashko
- Job title
- Head AHPs for Unplanned Care
- Email address
- [email protected]
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