Job overview

We are looking for an enthusiastic Band 6 Speech and Language Therapist with experience in Community Mental Health, SEND or Learning Disability to join our service. We are an innovative, award-winning, multi-disciplinary community team working with families whose children, including looked after children, have moderate to severe learning disabilities with significant psychological, behavioural and communication difficulties. The team is comprised of Clinical Psychologists, Speech and Language Therapists, Family Support Practitioners, Specialist Positive Behaviour Support Practitioner, Consultant Psychiatrist, Clinical Nurse Specialist, Team Leader/Dramatherapist and Occupational Therapist. 

We are a friendly and supportive team, and you will work creatively on different aspects of a child’s communication, identifying strategies to facilitate and enhance communicative effectiveness and reduce challenging behaviour with a small defined specialist caseload. As part of a multi-disciplinary team which provides psychologically informed interventions, you will also broaden or gain direct experience of a wide range of approaches including Systemic, Applied Behavioural, Positive Behaviour Support and the Family Partnership Model.

Main duties of the job

The key components of the job will be to provide:

• - a high quality community-based service to children with learning disabilities and their families, carers and other staff involved in their care.
• - provide specialist communication assessment and intervention to CYP on the caseload
• - work closely with other clinicians to safely manage risk and reduce the impact of challenging behaviour
• - provide support/training to the team and families in relation to any communication issues
• - participate in multi-disciplinary and multi-agency interventions for children presenting with challenging behaviours, including safeguarding.
• - liaise closely with other paediatric and specialist services to ensure communication, health and wellbeing needs are met and where required co-ordinate these services to ensure joined up working
• undertake initial appointments for new referrals to the team as a co-worker and be part of the referrals/duty rota
• supervise student/trainee speech and language therapists

The post is based in Hailsham, but covers the whole of East Sussex and you will be required to travel between sites. We are a community rather than clinic based service so your work will take place in a variety of settings including in family homes, schools, respite services and the wider community including in woodlands as part of our award winning Woodland Project.

Working for our organisation

There are excellent opportunities for research within Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. Professional development is encouraged through supervision, team CPD and wider CAMHS and Trust events. For further information regarding Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust please visit our website www.sussexpartnership.nhs.uk .Working in Sussex:

• Travel easily between coast and countryside, with a blend of picturesque villages and seaside towns there’s always new experiences to be enjoyed
• Embrace the city life with great access to visit Brighton and London
• With easy access to Gatwick and Heathrow and excellent railway links across the UK there is plenty of opportunity for adventure

 East Sussex CAMHS LD/FISS is a vibrant and robust team with friendly and supportive colleagues.

We manage some very complex cases but the team works well and provides lots of support and supervision and team members never feel they are working in isolation even during current remote working.

We believe this is a very exciting opportunity to gain and build on experience in CAMHS LD/FISS and we would welcome your interest in this post.